Owen was a busy and successful physician who memorized the entire works of Shakespeare as a way to clear his mind between difficult cases. He began to see patterns and in time discovered what is now called the word cipher.

Owen built a one-of-a-kind cipher wheel exactly as the hidden code in the Shakespearean plays instructs:

The easiest way to carry on the work is to
Take your knife and cut all our books asunder,
And set the leaves on a great firm wheel
Which rolls and rolls.

http://www.shakespearecode.com/ShakespeareCodeCipherWheel.html