Hi:
Rene wrote, "Why would Titanium be suspicious?
It is only Titanium anatase which would be anachronistic, and this was found in the Vinland map, not in the Voynich MS. Rich knows this well."
This actually doesn't settle the matter, only part of it, and there are still unanswered questions (which I will list below). Of course I do know the issues surrounding the form of anatase found in the Vinland map, but to be clear the term "anatase" is often used to ONLY denote the form found there, which is a post 1912 processed type, while it actually does include natural types of Titanium Dioxide:
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But I know what you mean, as I also thought, for some time, "anatase" was only the man made processed version of Titanium Dioxide, and that is what we are referring to with the Vinland map.
The issue with the anatase found in the Vinland Map... I know you know this, Rene, but for anyone who has not delved into the specifics of this... is not that it IS anatase (which is Titanium Dioxide) but that McCrone Associates determined, in 1972, that it is found there in a form which shows it has been subjected to a process which smooths or rounds its natural crystalline form. The only known process for this was patented in 1912, and not actually sold to the public, in inks and paints, until a few years later. The 1974 McCrone report gives 1920 as the first commercial use (and Kirsten Seaver uses this date, see below), but I've found it was used as early as 1917.
Even so, the form of the Titanium, and the quantity present, and how it got there, is all still very controversial.
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As Kirsten Seaver wrote to me regarding this issue, "There were pre-1920 patents for industrially modified anatase in both Norway and the US, but the fact is that it was only after ca. 1920 that the process was stable enough to be applied to the production of paints and inks, and it took several more years before the general public in Europe and the US had easy access to ready-made paints and inks."
And here is an excellent page outlining the problems with this post-1920 form of Titanium Dioxide, what it looks like, and why it matters: You are not allowed to view links.
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So that is the issue specific to the processed form of anatase, its modernity. But in raising this concern I was not ignoring the distinction between a processed and natural form of Titanium, but raising several questions:
1) While the type of Titanium found in the Vinland map betrays its modernity, the presence of it, especially in the quantity used, was in and of itself unusual. That is, the form placed it 1920 or later, but the presence of Titanium in older documents is still an issue. Trace amounts, maybe not so much.
"Until recently it was thought that ink used before the sixteenth century did not contain titanium. However, a new type of analysis detected titanium in the ink of the famous Bible printed by Johannes Gutenberg and in that of another fifteenth-century Bible known as B-36, though not in the ink of any of numerous other fifteenth-century books analyzed. This finding is of great significance, since it not only strongly supports the hypothesis that B-36 was printed by Gutenberg but also shows that the presence of titanium in the ink of the purportedly fifteenth century Vinland Map can no longer be regarded as a reason for doubting the map's authenticity."
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You see, the presence of Titanium is rare enough to help identify this B-36 bible AS a Gutenberg product. So the question relating to the Voynich McCrone finds of Titanium in the inks of samples 20A-1-20F and 17A-17F are to me something at least interesting: How much, and why is it there? What explains it, since for 1420 it is apparently rare to find?
2) It is only an assumption that the Titanium found in the Voynich is NOT the modern, anatase form. Yes we might assume that if they examined it, and found it to be modern anatase, they would have noted this. But we don't know IF they examined the crystals for the form, as the report actually does not even mention the Titanium, other than listing it as a find, in the charts at the end. But more importantly, the report does not mention the high magnification tests which would be necessary in order to determine which crystaline form the Titanium is. When listing the tests, the maximum magnification described is a 2.5x eyepiece. As can be seen in my link: You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. , they clearly show that an electron microscope was needed, and used, at powers of AT LEAST 25,000x were used, and up to 170,000x. Basically, McCrone only tells us they found it, presumably with their Spectroscopy, but not the quantity, nor the form, nor any explanation for its presence.
I also find it interesting that McCrone does NOT explain the Titanium, because on several other substances found, including the "unusual copper and zinc", they do make an effort to explain them. This leaves one with the opportunity to claim their not mentioning it means it is normal to find it, but this, too, would be incorrect, as they also explain several substances which are normal to find. In fact, almost all of both situations are explained in the main text... but not the Titanium. They just tell us they found it.
It is, to me, not nearly the end of this issue, because these and the other questions I've listed remain unanswered. To repeat and elaborate, the questions would be:
1) "Titanium Compound": How much was found? What form is it? Was it examined under the high powers of an electron microscope, as was done with the Vinland ink anatase Titanium?
2) "Unusual Copper and Zinc": Why "unusual"? For the era of the calfskin, or globally, for all manuscripts? Brass inkwells are suggested as a source, but does McCrone, do we, know that brass inkwells do impart copper and zinc to the ink? Can copper and zink appear in ink (rhymes! I could rap this...) when a modern brass pen nib is used?
3) Even McCrone admits they could not identify one of the gum binders, and found it did not match any in their "library", "The spectra include several sharp peaks in the region 1100-1000 cm-1 that are not expected for a gum as per the spectra in our library. This suggests the possibility of other constituents, which remain unidentified as of this date. Most recipes for iron gall inks include gum, usually gum Arabic, as an ingredient". But this is NOT Gum Arabic, they don't know what it is, so this is an important question to me. And what are the "other constituents"
4) Mercury is apparently a mystery: "Samples 9 and 17 also contained small amounts of mercury, but the other constituents are similar to the rest of the writing and drawing inks. PLM examination of the sample did not show the presence of vermillion (mercury sulfide), a common red pigment, so its origin remains unknown".
Anyway, the point to all this is that I cannot, nor can anyone else, make claims about what this all means. There are certainly enough implied and stated anomalies for me to object to the claim that "McCrone tested the ink, and found nothing out of the normal for a 15th century ink". And yet, this claim is stated as fact, in blogs, articles, and in documentaries. But McCrone says nothing about the age of the ink, nor even do they say it is normal for the 15th century. And at the same time, they point out anomalies in the ink, and unidentified substances.
So do these issues imply modern forgery? I don't know, they need to be answered, and perhaps the answers will show the ink to be proper for the 15th century after all. We don't know that yet. Which is my only point here, and always has been... it is not settled, until these questions are answered.