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

[Dennis <tsalagi@xxxxxxxx>]

Nick Pelling wrote:
> 
> 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. 

<snip>

> 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?

	This one I like!  I like the dating, the connection
with a known 
historical event  --  the Quattrocento cipher arms race
-- and the contained 
cryptological secret.  

	Last but most important, the cryptological secret 
rather reminds me of list elder statesman Jim Reeds'
proof that the third book of Tritthemius'
Steganographia is in fact a 
cipher system:

http://www.maa.org/mathland/mathtrek_5_4_98.html

Dennis
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