Distinguishing Characters

[nablator]

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.

A substitution cipher would have been deemed superior (if anyone ever had to choose, which I doubt) because it was secure enough at the time (without computers) and faster to use: with a little practice most symbols could be remembered and there was no need to glance at the key at every letter.

There is an evolutionary gap between substitution ciphers and more advanced ciphers/codes that the Voynich fills nicely.