Re: Cost of the VMS...?

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Stolfi,

At 22:13 17/08/01 -0300, you wrote:
> http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/99-12-26-scan-tests/f74r-300-c099.jpg
>
> It must have taken me somewhere between 0.5--2.0 hours to fabricate
> that "lost" page of the VMS.

That explains *so* much - is it really Daiinald Duck on the left? :-)

>  That is probably how much it would have
> taken for the VMS author to write and draw the real thing from a draft
> copy. Thus the whole book must have taken 100--300 man-hours, i.e.
> between a couple of weeks and a couple of months.

That's a good ballpark figure, thanks. And it's also good to know that 
vellum and ink were widely available. But how much would they have cost 
someone to buy in 1500 or so? I remember reading that a whole flock of 
sheep was needed to provide the vellum for a psalter (which gave rise to 
the use of Latin abbreviations, so as to minimise the amount of vellum used).

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....

PS: do you also have any idea how much faster a ball-point pen is than a 
quill? :-/