TheCodeBreakers
American rare book dealer named Wilfred Voynich purchased it for an
undisclosed sum from the Jesuit school of Mondragone in Frascati, Italy.
Eager to read the manuscript, Voynich generously supplied
photostats to anyone who seemed likely to solve it. Many tried. Botanists
thought they could read it-by identifying the plants and assuming their
names as probable words; one difficulty here was that most of the flora
were
imaginary. Astronomers recognized stars such as Aldebaran and the
Hyades but could not force a solution. Philologists tried the methods
used for reading lost languages and failed. Cryptanalysts observed
characteristics in common with ordinary ciphers and found that it
resisted their well-tried techniques. Voynich heard from many specialists
who were interested in the problem: palaeographer H. Omont of Paris'
Bibliotheque Nationale, who had written a learned article about a 15th-
century cryptographic manuscript on alchemy; Professor A. G. Little, a
annaabi.ee 
