Re: Cryptography of 1502 with Voynich resonances

[reeds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Jim Reeds)]

On Jul 29, 20:10, Rene Zandbergen wrote:

> Subject: Re: Cryptography of 1502 with Voynich resonances
> Thanks to Adam McLean for this interesting letter.

Yes, from me, too.
> 
> The script is reminiscent of the ones presented by D'Imperio
> in Fig. 39 (those who haven't got D'Imperio can see it at Takeshi's
> online translation of it), and also of the various alphabets given
> by Tranchedino, if memory serves me.

The 1502 cipher Adam showed us is typical of ciphers of the period.

.. 
> Does this mean that the encryption by pairs of letters
> is what constitutes the nomenclator? If so, then I have
> always misunderstood its meaning (thinking that it meant
> the use of short code groups for entire words - important
> ones at that).

The term "nomenclator" is something of an anachronism, or at
least smacks of terminology shift.  It is a modern term for
the kind of ciphers used from the middle ages into the early
modern period, with a list of plain text elements each with one
or more cipher equivalents.  Sometimes the plain text elements
were mostly letters and letter sequences, sometimes they included
common words, sometimes proper names and titles.

Dr. Karl de Leeuw, a Dutch historian of cryptography, has told me
he has seen the word "nomenclator" used in its modern cryptographic
sense before 1900. But it was not often so used. This meaning is
not listed in the Oxford English Dictionary, for instance. David
Kahn, I think, made it popular in his 1967 "The Codebreakers".
(To the ancient Romans, a nomenclator was a servant who reminded
one of the names of people one met!)



-- 
Jim Reeds, AT&T Labs - Research
Shannon Laboratory, Room C229, Building 103
180 Park Avenue, Florham Park, NJ 07932-0971, USA

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