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+--- Thread: [split] Volvelles or Disks (/thread-5366.html)
RE: [split] Volvelles or Disks - emanuele.pegorin - 15-02-2026
The idea of a mechanical system like a volvelle, which could explain a large part of the Voynich text, makes sense. Of course, it still needs to be proven, like everything else, but no one has proven anything yet, so it’s useless to just argue “it must be proven.” You can demonstrate a couple of pages, and the rest might conflict. Every new idea deserves consideration. Then we can also think about it ourselves.
RE: [split] Volvelles or Disks - nablator - 15-02-2026
(15-02-2026, 06:49 PM)AliciaNelPresente Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It is a 3-Ring Stack configured as follows:
1. High Redundancy on the Middle Ring: Painting frequent roots like "chol" on 50% of the teeth solves the Zipf/Frequency issue.
2. Coprime Tooth Counts (Like 17 vs 19): Mismatching the rings solves the Length Autocorrelation/Clustering issue.
3. Line-Start Mechanics (Reset): Resetting the lever at the margin solves the Entropy/Positional issue.
How do they solve anything?
I remember Nick Pelling jokingly saying on his blog that it looks like a cipher wheel was stuck on "or". That would definitely explain f15v, 22 "or" in 12 short lines.
(15-02-2026, 08:04 PM)DG97EEB Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....adding a 3rd... I know an AI response when I read it...
The overconfidence is typical but CopyLeaks doesn't detect it (0% AI content). It's very reliable usually.
RE: [split] Volvelles or Disks - AliciaNelPresente - 15-02-2026
Hi again Ed,
Thanks for the reply, I'm having a really nice Sunday afternoon, to be honest haha!
Let’s start with point #3 because it made me chuckle. You say, "I know an AI response when I read it."
It is fascinating how "You are an AI" has become the modern version of "You are a Heretic." Would an AI cite specific page numbers from René Zandbergen’s 2021 papers to correct your math? Because that is exactly what I am about to do:
Let's dismantle the pillars of your critique using the documentation you ignored.
The Statistical Critique (You are fighting Zandbergen, not me)
Claim: "With 17×19×23 teeth you get 7,429 combinations... leaving no room for redundancy."
Correction: You are creating a strawman with those numbers. If you look at Zandbergen, Page 6, he explicitly calculates the capacity of a standard 3-wheel system, below is a direct quote (I like this pink colour):
"Three wheels with only 24 word fragments each, will give rise to 24x24x24 = 13,824 different words, already well in excess of the number of word types in the manuscript''
The VMS has ~8,000 word types. A simple 24-tooth system (which is small) generates nearly 14,000 combinations.
There is a massive surplus of ~6,000 slots. That is plenty of room for the "Redundancy" I described to create the Zipf skew. The math supports the machine.
---
Claim: "The blank teeth also predict bimodal word lengths... VMS word lengths are smooth and unimodal."
Correction: This is factually incorrect.
Please see Zandbergen, Page 12, Figure 7. He demonstrates that a 3-wheel system with variable/null slots produces a distribution that is "exactly binomial" (unimodal). The mechanical interaction smooths the curve. It does not split it. You are predicting a bimodal output for a system that has been mathematically proven to generate a binomial one.
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Claim: "Coprime gears... make a specific testable prediction: periodic autocorrelation with cycle length 323 words."
Correction: You are assuming the machine runs infinitely without stopping. The cycle length is indeed 323 words if you never lift the pen. But the scribe hits a Carriage Return (Line Reset) every ~8-10 words.
The "Reset" breaks the cycle before the periodicity can become visible. The autocorrelation doesn't decay because it's "natural language", it decays because the mechanical cycle is interrupted and reset 30 times per page.
The Historical Critique (The "1600s" Myth) ahah this is the most fun one!
Claim: "Mechanical Volvelles didn't actually exist until the 1600s... so either time travel is involved..."
Correction: This is a surprisingly common misconception.
- Ramon Llull (died 1315): Used concentric rotating wheels (Ars Magna) to generate combinations of concepts.
- Giovanni Fontana (c. 1420): A contemporary of the VMS, designed cryptographic instruments and bellicose machines.
- Leon Battista Alberti (1467): Explicitly described the Cipher Disk.
To say volvelles didn't exist until the 1600s is to erase three centuries of astronomical and combinatorial history. The VMS fits perfectly in the "experimental gap" between Llull and Alberti.
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Claim: "Section-level register differences... would need wheel swaps, which puts the instruction set back in play."
Agreement: Yes! Exactly!
Different sections (Herbal vs. Bio) use different wheels. That is the instruction set. Just as an Enigma machine operator changes rotors for a different day, the VMS scribe changed wheels for a different subject. That’s not a flaw in the theory, it’s a feature of the hardware.
Please allow me to delete what I mentioned earlier, “thank you for raising the level.”
(15-02-2026, 08:12 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(15-02-2026, 06:49 PM)AliciaNelPresente Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It is a 3-Ring Stack configured as follows:
1. High Redundancy on the Middle Ring: Painting frequent roots like "chol" on 50% of the teeth solves the Zipf/Frequency issue.
2. Coprime Tooth Counts (Like 17 vs 19): Mismatching the rings solves the Length Autocorrelation/Clustering issue.
3. Line-Start Mechanics (Reset): Resetting the lever at the margin solves the Entropy/Positional issue.
How do they solve anything?
I remember Nick Pelling jokingly saying on his blog that it looks like a cipher wheel was stuck on "or" or "aiin". That would definitely explain some pages.
(15-02-2026, 08:04 PM)DG97EEB Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....adding a 3rd... I know an AI response when I read it...
CopyLeaks doesn't detect it (0% AI content). It's very reliable usually.
As a coworker likes to say: ''I'm pointing at the moon, and you're staring at my finger''
RE: [split] Volvelles or Disks - AliciaNelPresente - 15-02-2026
(15-02-2026, 08:01 PM)emanuele.pegorin Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The idea of a mechanical system like a volvelle, which could explain a large part of the Voynich text, makes sense. Of course, it still needs to be proven, like everything else, but no one has proven anything yet, so it’s useless to just argue “it must be proven.” You can demonstrate a couple of pages, and the rest might conflict. Every new idea deserves consideration. Then we can also think about it ourselves.
Thank you, Emanuele. You are absolutely right, demanding a complete solution from day one is exactly why this mystery has remained stuck for a century. If a mechanical hypothesis explains the structure better than a linguistic one, it warrants a serious 'reverse engineering' effort (already on going), not dismissal. We are trying to reconstruct the machine first, the text will follow.
RE: [split] Volvelles or Disks - DG97EEB - 15-02-2026
Thanks Alicia, and it's true, I was multi tasking and got some of my numbers wrong. I don't have time on a sunday evening sadly to go through your rebuttal, but the bottom line remains the same. Build a model, in Excel if necessary, and show it works
RE: [split] Volvelles or Disks - AliciaNelPresente - 15-02-2026
No worries Ed, debate is growth.
Enjoy the rest of your Sunday!
RE: [split] Volvelles or Disks - DG97EEB - 15-02-2026
(15-02-2026, 09:46 PM)AliciaNelPresente Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.No worries Ed, debate is growth.
Enjoy the rest of your Sunday!
Small but important point. I said mechanical volvelles didn't exist, not volvelles. The ones that did exist including the ones you cited were built on paper and quite different from the ones you describe.
Mechanical astrolabes did exist and there some wonderful papers by David King and Karl Meier on cryptography and astrolabes that are worth reading, including the Catalans and Picardy ones. Sadly across the 4 papers I've read, not a single Voynich glyph or Aberil in sight..
RE: [split] Volvelles or Disks - Yavernoxia - 15-02-2026
Alicia, I think your hypothesis is very interesting and thoughtfully developed. The three-ring wheel system makes a lot of sense to me as a way to explain how the text could have been generated. The prefix–root–suffix structure we see so often in the VMS would fit naturally with a mechanical setup like that, and it seems to account quite well for the regularity and repetition patterns in the manuscript.
I find the idea that the text may have been generated mechanically rather than linguistically quite fascinating. A system based on rotating elements or volvelle-like devices could plausibly produce structured output without relying on conventional grammar or semantics. In some ways, that feels like a more logical explanation for certain statistical features than assuming a fully developed underlying language.
Regarding this, do you think the underlying text is actually meaningful? Within the context of the volvelle hypothesis, which possibility makes more sense to you: that the wheels were encoding coherent content, or that they were simply generating structured but ultimately non-semantic output AKA gibberish?
RE: [split] Volvelles or Disks - AliciaNelPresente - 16-02-2026
Thank you so much for your kind words. It is wonderful to see the architecture of the three rings resonating with you as well, sometimes, when you spend so much time looking at gears, it’s a relief to know you aren’t the only one hearing the "click" of the pieces falling into place.
As you have seen, I am open to any kind of questions, and when I don't know the answer, I will simply say so. As I always tell my students: there are no stupid questions if the curiosity is honest. I completely understand that mechanical systems can be a bit... you know what I mean
I can confirm quite resolutely that the text shown in MS 408 is coherent, non narrative content.
RE: [split] Volvelles or Disks - Rafal - 16-02-2026
Quote:I can confirm quite resolutely that the text shown in MS 408 is coherent, non narrative content.
So please do it
If you can imagine some mechanical system that would generate let's say 90% of Voynichese words in their final form, show it to us. That would be the confirmation.
Let me state my position. I am not against wheels and volvelles. I think they could be used.
And I think the text could be meaningless which idea you seem to like too but due to some reasons avoid to say it directly
I believe however that if there was a wheel system to generate meaningless text, it wasn't 100% mechanical. It was auxilliary but there was still a human making decisions.
Let's take your link:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
And now take the sentence:
Select none or more glyphs from the outer ring
Does the cipher wheel system picks zero, one, or more glyphs from the outer ring here? No, a human does it. A human chooses each time which glyphs to pick and what number of glyphs to pick.
In this specific model he doesn't even have to turn the wheels.
Of course he could for example cast dice to choose the glyphs but this model doesn't mention it.
Does your imagined system also work this way or is it more automated?