Coldplay album cover decoded

The secret behind the artwork to Coldplay's new album 'X&Y' has been decoded.

The seemingly random blocks of colour are in fact a 19th century telegraphic code.

Developed by Emile Baudot, the Baudot Code - or the International Telegraph Code No. 1 - was first patented in 1874 and used throughout the world for terrestrial and undersea telegraph links for over 70 years.

However by the mid 20th century, the Baudot Code was supplanted Morse Code as the most commonly used telegraphic alphabet.

As worked out by a fan on franzferdinand.org, the centre pages of the 'X&Y' inlay shows the full telegraphic alphabet, with the vertical arrangements of blocks representing each letter of the regular alphabet, as well as the coding for numbers and other symbols such as brackets, question marks and ampersands.

When applied to the cover image, it is revealed that the configuration of blocks spells out ‘X&Y', whilst the message at the back of the album's booklet says, 'Make Trade Fair'. The colour scheming is merely for decoration.document.write(unescape("