Not many real Confederate Army Cipher Disks survived and there are only five known to exist today. Two of these are in the hands of private collectors, one is part of the collection of the Smithsonian Institute and two are at the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond (Virginia, USA). The Disks could be used as simple substitution cipher by setting the wheels at a known alignment, such as using setting the inner wheel letter A with the outer wheel letter D as shown in the photo of the Confederate Cipher above, but this would have been quite easy...

The Union Army Cipher Wheel was primarily used for flag signaling during the American Civil War. The numbers on the outside of the disk would go along with a certain motion of the flag. For example, when signaling a 1, you may wave the flag left, and to signal an 8 you would wave the flag to the right. In some versions of this disk, the numbers one and two were used, but 2 was later replaced with 8 so that the numbers could be more easily read from any direction. There was a third flag signal which was represented by...