byatan > 18-07-2021, 01:24 AM
Aga Tentakulus > 18-07-2021, 01:54 AM
davidjackson > 18-07-2021, 08:27 PM
(18-07-2021, 01:24 AM)byatan Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I understand that during the time period the ms was written, it is well documented that crypto was in common use for general government written communications that might foreseeably be subject to inspection by one's adversaries.The Italian city states were using ciphers, not necessarily cryptography. By the end of the century a lot of governments were using ciphers; at the beginning, almost nobody.
(18-07-2021, 01:24 AM)byatan Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This has the implication that knowledge of the existence and use of crypto, if not of the specific methods themselves, would have been reasonably widespread beyond those who actually used or computed crypto for official purposes. I don't know how well this is documented; namely: how much evidence is there for the use of cryptography outside of government in the early renaissance?
bi3mw > 19-07-2021, 12:07 PM
Mark Knowles > 19-07-2021, 03:20 PM
(19-07-2021, 12:07 PM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If one assumes that the VMS was encoded using known methods of the early 15th century, then the mystery would certainly have been solved long ago.
(19-07-2021, 12:07 PM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(19-07-2021, 12:07 PM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
bi3mw > 19-07-2021, 05:12 PM
(19-07-2021, 03:20 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What do you mean by "known methods"?
(19-07-2021, 03:20 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What do you mean by "simple substitution"?
(19-07-2021, 03:20 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It is interesting that you bring up Ramon Llull. His work is certainly an interesting line of inquiry, though it is hard to see how it could be a precursor to the Voynich cipher.
Mark Knowles > 19-07-2021, 05:53 PM
(19-07-2021, 05:12 PM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(19-07-2021, 03:20 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What do you mean by "simple substitution"?
I refer to the paper of @Nickpelling ( see above ) respectively to the presented ciphers of Simeone de Crema and Michele Steno. As I see it, these are ciphers that essentially simply perform a letter substitution in the alphabet.
R. Sale > 19-07-2021, 09:27 PM
(19-07-2021, 05:53 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I should say that the Steno cipher key does a bit more than perform a letter substitution in the alphabet as it has substitutions for whole words as well as nulls.
Aga Tentakulus > 19-07-2021, 10:47 PM
Mark Knowles > 20-07-2021, 03:40 PM
(19-07-2021, 10:47 PM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.@Mark, I wouldn't be surprised if you've stumbled across the right key or application a few times, but didn't notice it.I have certainly seen a lot of early 15th century ciphers and not studied many of them in nearly as much detail as I would have liked. However there are also big gaps in the cipher history, that I know of, from this period. I would love to see a Milanese cipher key from between the years 1425 and 1444.