Cipher Mysteries

For a decade, I've wondered whether any of the Voynich Manuscript's circular drawings depict astronomical instruments - for before satnav there was celnav ("celestial navigation"). Here's a brief guide to three key instrument types from the VMs' timeframe, and my current thoughts on the enigmatic circular diagram on f57v... * * * * * * * A key navigational problem of the 15th ...

Giancarlo Truffa recently posted a link to the HASTRO-L mailing list that contains a mention of a surprising claim that Leonardo da Vinci apparently designed a telescope:- On page 59(b) of Leonardo’s Codex Atlanticus appears this drawing. Bülent Atalay proposed in 2005 that it is Leonardo’s “telescope”. The page also contains a “study of light reflection of a concave mirror”. And ...

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 ...

In early 2008, I became interested in the mystery surrounding the first invention of the telescope. The year was the 400th anniversary of the first Dutch telescope patent application - yet the more accounts and explanations I read (even the very best ones, such as Albert van Helden's exemplary "The Invention of the Telescope"), the less I believed any of them. For the ...

Twice a year, the Leiden antiquarian bookseller Burgersdijk and Niermans hold a book auction - the one coming up shortly is on 19th-20th May 2009. Flicking idly through the listings, I noticed that going for (what seems to me a very reasonable) 300-ish euros is a 1608 printed edition of the 365 letters of the philosopher / astronomer Celio ...

Following up the recent post here on Tycho Brahe's moustache, Jan Hurych emails in to point out that a team of Czech researchers has also been forensically analyzing Brahe's handkerchief. Disturbingly, their interim results indicate that he may have been addicted to Brasso. (OK, OK, so it's a joke: but as it made me laugh, onto the blog it ...

Enciphered diaries & a murdered famous astronomer? No, it's not Enrique Joven's book out unexpectedly early, but this gem of a story from Der Spiegel: it describes how enciphered / encoded sections of the 400-year-old diary of Tycho's distant cousin Erik Brahe seem to allude to Brahe's murder. Brahe's body is about to be exhumed to find out the ...

A short note just arrived from Enrique Joven, concerning a recent talk he attended at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) by Dr. Paolo Molaro from the Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste: "On the invention of the telescope and the paintings of Jan Brueghel" Jan Brueghel depicted telescopes in four paintings spanning the period between 1609 and 1621. We have ...

Even though people often assert (rather lazily) that the Voynich Manuscript is the only artefact 'of its kind', this is false, because there are plenty of similar documents. For the most part, the significant difference is merely one of scale, not of type - for example, the similar enciphered Quattrocento documents that do exist are neither as well-encrypted nor as large ...

The precise sequence of the invention of the telescope (and its early diffusion) remains cloudy: as an intellectual historian, the main issues revolve more around how the key ideas flowed - and, indeed, what ideas were even possible at different times. I also have a professional interest in lens technologies, and so was fascinated when I recently came across a blog entry ...