VMs: Peering into the Stenographic Dark Ages...

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Jeff,

At 22:36 07/11/2003 +0000, Jeff wrote:
> All tests I ran against English, French, Latin etc seemed to fair badly. 
> It was only when I used Italian text from 1550 that I started to get 
> promising results. Though these are still not 100% conclusive they are 
> nearer than anything else. If Nick is right about the VMS being in a short 
> hand I feel that my results may be wrong in many respects. Unless of 
> course the structure of the underlying Italian is not destroyed during the 
> production of the shorthand.

Don't worry too much - I don't think anyone has really properly thought 
through all the implications arising from what a lost Italian shorthand put 
through a verbose cipher might look like... certainly, I I haven't yet. 
:-)  But all this is just one of my many theories, & I would still be 
delighted if you were to break it from a completely different angle. ;-)

> It would be interesting to obtain a sample of the shorthand of the period 
> in text form to make comparisons with the plain text Italian. Anyone got 
> any handy? :~)

If I knew of any, I'd have scanned them and posted them already... but I 
don't, so haven't. :-(

All these centuries later, there are probably only four likely sources for 
shorthand produced during these 1350-1588 Stenographic Dark Ages:-
(1) Collections of shorthands by later authors on the history of shorthand
        - GC and I have both looked for these without any notable success.
        - FWIW, Pitman mentions Radcliff's abbreviatory system, but that's it.
(2) Marginalia added to existing manuscripts
        - The few world authorities on marginalia haven't returned my 
emails. :-(
        - Even if they eventually do, I still don't hold out a lot of hope 
here. :-(
(3) Scrape-marks on the wooden backs of wax tablets
        - Can the back surface of a wax tablet be scanned (with infrared, 
etc)?
        - Even so, it would require approaching a lot of European museums
        - Even so, no guarantee of any significant results
(4) Shorthands misclassified as unbroken ciphers
        - Unfortunately, extremely few early ciphered documents still 
exist. :-(
        - All the same, this is probably the best option for finding these 
lost shorthands?

Does anyone have any better suggestions?

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


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