[Panel Session] Cryptologic History panel Oct. 19, 2017

[asmask]

More importantly, he did show this MS around quite a lot.

Singer reports seeing the MS in the hands of the book dealer Baer of Frankfurt, which may have been in 1912 or even 1911. (Singer only traveled to Frankfurt in the years 1911-1914, and one of the Baer brothers started a shop in London in 1911).

Millicent Sowerby, who was working in Voynich's shop in London from end 1912 to 1914 (from memory) reports how visitors would come to this shop to admire his recent acquisitions, especially the famous Roger Bacon cipher.

After Voynich moved to the US in 1914, he started a road tour, showing the most important items of his collection. The Roger Bacon cipher MS was one of the stars in these events. The first were in Princeton University and in New York city. The best known (and best documented) event was at the Art institute in Chicago (Oct. 1915), followed by the University of Michigan (early Nov.), the University of Illinois (mid Nov.), the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo (mid Dec.) and other museums.
He repeated this later (1917 I believe).

This is a much more interesting line of discussion. (Maybe Rich will retort here?)

I have heard casually, over the years, both this claim and the claims that Rich make in his video. The "he showed it off" and "he only showed certain people" arguments would seem to depend heavily on context. Admittedly, I don't know enough to side strongly either way; some extra-conversational resources may lend a lot here, and perhaps some of it is more readily available than what I am currently aware of.

For those of us who are less educated on the history of the VM, here some questions I think are pertinent to unraveling this matter (at least in part):

• How was the VM displayed in Voynich's shop, and to what extent was it subject to the scrutiny of the shop-goers?
  
• What documentation exists to support that the VM/"Bacon cipher" was a prevalent item in Voynich's roadshows?
  
• To what extent where the spectators of these venues allowed to examine the VM?
  
• Exactly which scholarly figures were permitted to examine closely the VM, and is there any reason to suppose they had bias strongly in favor of Voynich's claims as to the provenance/origins of the MS?
  
• For that matter, were there dissenting claims as to the VM's provenance/origins, and if so, who made such claims, and how prevalent were such claims?
  

Of course, these questions are just a proposed outline to assist in better understanding the issue at hand. If anyone has resources that otherwise explain the disparity here, please, school me.