‘University of Pennsylvania’ category posts - « Cipher Mysteries »


The UPenn Archives hold the papers of William Romaine Newbold, whose (somewhat delusional) decryption of the Wilfrid Voynich’s “Roger Bacon” Manuscript surprised the world in the 1920s.


Upcoming crypto talk by Lawren Smithline…

Posted by nickpelling on Jan 17th, 2010 - 2 comments.
Just in case you thought my recent list of upcoming talks was too UK-centric, here's a nice one from the US... A while back on Cipher Mysteries, I mentioned the 200-year old challenge ciphertext sent to Thomas Jefferson by UPenn maths professor Robert Patterson. But in a PhysOrg.com article (linked from the Daily Grail), there's news of a lecture ...
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Voynich challenges, updated…

Posted by nickpelling on Jun 30th, 2009 - 12 comments.
Every few years, I get around to posting a list of Voynich challenges - things about the Voynich Manuscript that we would like to know or to find out. Looking back at my 2001 list of Voynich Challenges, I seem to have been flailing around at every codicological nuance going: yes, there are hundreds of interesting angles to consider - ...
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Did any Voynich pages go missing?

Posted by nickpelling on Jul 7th, 2008.
When the Voynich Manuscript misdecipherer William Romaine Newbold died, his friend & colleague Roland Grubb Kent decided to bring all his late friend's notes together into a book: this was published in 1928 by the University of Philadelphia Press under the title "The Cipher of Roger Bacon". If you'd like your own copy, Kessinger sell a modern print-on-demand reproduction of ...
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