VMs: RE: And the VMS' big secret is...

["John Grove" <John@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

	Nah,

	It's too much work for a proof of concept. Demos are invariably the
quick and dirty basic functions - if you want to see more, you pay for
full development. I doubt your 15th century entrepreneur would have put
that amount of effort into a proof of concept-then never used it himself
even
when nobody else bought into it.

	Look at Leonardo's proof-of-concepts... Nice pictures, some basic devices,
but forget building the real thing until somebody actually pays (and then
comes
the hard part - reality).

	Lastly, unfortunately your last paragraph is completely based on
your assumption that the rosettes and volvelles are cryptographic systems
although
no one could prove they are or they aren't at this time. Therefore, the last
question should be "Assuming the rosettes and volvelles might be
cryptographic
components, why else would they be included" - which isn't much better than
your original question but makes it clear that the assumption is the major
part
of the question.

	John.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx]On
Behalf Of Nick Pelling
Sent: Saturday, August 02, 2003 11:48 AM
To: vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: VMs: And the VMS' big secret is...


Hi everyone,

I woke up this morning with this one thought: what if the Voynich's biggest
secret is simply... the Voynichese crypto system?

As I art-history date the VMS (from its iconography) to Northern Italy
circa 1450-1475, this places it (probably) after the 1454 Treaty of Lodi
(the formation of the 25-year-duration Most Holy League, which prompted all
the North Italian states to send envoys to each other, and then to try to
acquire crypto systems to ensure that those same envoys could send/receive
information securely) - ie, right in the middle of the Quattrocento cipher
arms race.

A new (and much improved) kind of cryptographic system would have been a
potentially valuable secret - so perhaps the function of the VMS was simply
to test out this new system?

As we know from history, the culture of using nomenclature-type ciphers was
to prove hard to shift, even in the presence of demonstrably more secure
16th century systems (like polyalphabetic ciphers, etc) - so even if the
VMS did prove to be a successful proof-of-concept demonstration, its coding
system too was not enough to sway the established crypto culture.

Put in more contemporary dot-com terms: might the VMS simply be a
proof-of-concept demo for a Quattrocento cryptographic startup which folded
before getting to market?

Why else would the VMS include (as I currently suggest) an encrypted model
of its novel encoding/decoding instrument (ie, the 9-rosette map), and an
encrypted version of its code-tables (ie, the astrological volvelles) if
the coding system was not the secret itself?

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


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