Some things I noticed when looking at the orginal scanned image:
(<a href="http://cdn.thenextweb.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2012/11/large-pigeon-message.png" rel="nofollow">http://cdn.thenextweb.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2012/...</a>)<p>The NURP text part contains numbers - why is number 76 on bottom one aligned under the 194 as if this is a sum (or subtraction)?
suggesting the person who wrote this knew that this was important.<p>Why is The Time of origin box underlined? is this to show that this number (1522) is to be used?
Also note the style of the number 2 varies as if done by different people.<p>Back to the code itself, a comment has been made that there are 27 blocks with what looks like a time at the end. Was this inserted here
as a kind of checksum to stop any additions to the coded message?<p>As a side note, if you subtract the NURP numbers: 40-37 = 3 and 194-76 = 118, grouped together (using the 2 in the Number of copies sent box):<p>31 18, swap to make the date 1831, and use the 6 as day in a month.... I'll let you google that!