VMs: Re: John M. Manly's 1922 Harpers article...

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Jorge,

> It is not really a "micrograph", but here are some high-resolution
> images of f87v that Beinecke provided us, a couple of years ago, as a
> test of what their in-house scanner was capable of delivering(*).
>
>   http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/BeineckeScanSample-f87v-top.jpg
>   http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/BeineckeScanSample-f87v-bot.jpg

Great, thanks! Though 10x more magnification would have been nice too - one 
can but hope. :-)

> (I haven't checked, but presumably this scan is available at their
> VMS gallery site too.)

I don't remember seeing it there, but never mind, we have it now! :-)

>   (7) Are there any signs of writing indentation on the pages?
>
> What you mean by "indentation"?

The physical mark of the writing implement on the page - ie, a pen leaving 
its furrow. IIRC, these indentations are normally photographed by lighting 
the page very nearly parallel to its plane. :-)

>    (8) What writing instrument was used for the lettering? Quill, metal pen,
>    brush, etc?
>
> If you look closely at the text, especially between the two flower
> bunches, you will see several places where a single stroke splits into
> two parallel tracks. At those places, apparently, the instrument was
> running out of ink and/or was being pressed harder against the page.

EVA "l" seems to be the most common character exhibiting this feature on 
these pages - instances of these frequently appear to terminate in a "split 
end". Also the ink on the (presumably) final (NW-to-SE) stroke of the same 
letter is quite heavy, which is consistent with the writer carrying over a 
learned writing habit from his/her normal writing into the VMS' script.

Hmmm.... we might examine candidates for the VMS' author by looking for 
this same artefact in any autograph letters of theirs, etc. :-)

> Note also that the thicker strokes are in the NW-SE direction and have
> squarish ends. These features are typical of quill pens, which were
> trimmed so has to end with a rectangular "nib", and then slit
> lengthwise in order to better regulate the ink flow to the tip. Brush
> strokes would look *very* different.

True - though I'll have to think the implications of this through for a 
while... :-)

Hmmm... does anyone know roughly how many pages of text a typical quill pen 
would last?

> I don't know when metal pens were invented, but they were definitely
> not in common use in the 15th century.  Moreover, I suspect that
> a metal pen would have been too stiff to produce those split strokes.

I'm not sure either way about this - I'll try to find out. But as normal, 
we only require a single metal nib to be in use to mess up the theory. :-)

>   (9) Was the same individual writing instrument used by both Hand A
>   and Hand B?
>
> There is a report on the VMS done by a handwriting expert, available
> from Jim Reeds's site (IIRC). He flatly says that the whole book is
> written in a single hand.

I'll check this out - but I have to say that I'd probably need a fair bit 
of persuading to agree. :-/

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