Cipher Mysteries

(I'll declare my hand: back when my 2008 History Today article on the early history of the telescope came out, Enrique Joven very kindly translated it into Spanish for the magazine Astronomia, so I know Enrique pretty well. That said, Cipher Mysteries reviews don't have star ratings & I'm not one to hide what I'm thinking, so this connection shouldn't ...

We just had a very enjoyable family day out strolling through the Mayor of London's Thames Festival 2009: having started with some paella and a set from the remarkably good Petebox near the London Eye, we spent the whole afternoon mooching past countless stalls and live displays along the river towards Tower Bridge. So far, so not very Cipher Mysteries-esque: but then we ...

Equal parts brilliant and frustrating, Rolf Willach's "The Long Route to the Invention of the Telescope" (2008), which reprises his featured sessions at the September 2008 conference in Middelburg, is a book formed of two stunningly different halves. Through his insightful and breathtakingly meticulous analysis in the first seven chapters, Willach dramatically reconstructs the history of optical craft in the centuries preceding the invention of the ...

Here's a little piece of Voynichiana pinging on the edges of the VMs research radar, concerning Tadeáš Hájek z Hájku (1525-1600), who I thought had not to date been speculatively linked with the VMs. It came from the text accompanying the "Earth and Sky: Astronomy and Geography at the University between the 15th and the 18th centuries" exhibition at ...

A nice edition of "In Our Time" on Radio 4 this morning (a tip of the blogging hat to Chris R and Paul C, who both wished the morning Guildford traffic jam had been slightly worse so that they could have heard it all), all about our old Holy Roman Emperor pal, Rudolph II. You can also download ...