Distinguishing Characters

[Mark Knowles]

If it is simple enough to not need any historical precedent/influence and therefore in some sense outside of history then I would have thought it would have been invented multiple times in different places and historical periods.

If it had a great practical value or if there was no other way to encipher texts it would have been.

But if was a superior way to encipher text then surely it would have been very popular. Clearly a cipher as difficult to break as the Voynich cipher would have been preferred to the standard ciphers of that time.