Hi everybody, welcome to Thinking Sideways. I'm Steve, as always, I'm joined by my co-host

Devon and Joe. And once again, we're going to look into kind of a big mystery and we're going to solve it. Yeah, I don't know about that. But we've gotten a lot of listener requests for this particular story and we finally gave in. We're going to do it. We've also gotten a lot of listener requests for longer shows. So just keep in mind, this is what you asked for. Yeah, it is going to be a long one because ladies and gentlemen, what we're going to talk about today is we're going to talk about the Voynich

manuscript and a lot of people have probably heard of the manuscript, but we're going to we're going to go through all of the details and you're going to be really surprised at how much there is to give it a basic overview is the Voynich manuscript is a book which is written in an unknown language and it's full of illustrations or maybe a known language, but we don't know what it is, but an unknown alphabet. That's possible. That's possible.

Sorry. That's okay. Let's start.

Strange code. It could be a strange code. Let's start with the history and talk about the book first, probably the simplest place to probably the beginning, the best place. Okay, the book itself, it's called the Voynich manuscript because it was purchased by a man named Wilfred Voynich in 1912, but it's been around for several hundred years.

And we know some of the history or people guess at some of the history and we'll I'll just dive right into the history somewhere between 1600 to 1610. It's believed that the book was owned by the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II, and this would, by the way, be well over a hundred years after it was created.

Well, according to the theories that of the age of creation, yes, so this is this is a partial history. So this is passed through a lot of famous hands. It has from there, it left the Emperor Rudolph II's hand and was owned both theoretically by his imperial distiller, a man by the name of Jacobus Tepensks, which is an easy name to say.

Super easy. It ends in a CZ. So I think I nailed that. Yeah, it's between 1630 to 1645. They think that a German Bohemian alchemist named George Buresch owned it 1645 to 1665. It's believed that it was owned by Johannes Marcus Marcy of Cronland.

Yeah, wherever that is. Yeah, I might actually be a store or not a country. Yeah, I went to the local Cronland. Yeah, yeah, he actually it was I read about this. He was friends with George Buresch and when Buresch died, he will the book to Marcy of Cronland.

Oh, okay. Yeah, and apparently he was friends with with with Mr. Kircher and Buresch had actually been in correspondence with Kircher because he thought he felt that Kircher had had the had the smarts to actually decipher break this code. You're right. I remember reading that. Yeah. Wait, wait, who's Kircher? He was a very bright guy.

Anyway, but but so he he actually he actually hand copied sections of the books of the book and and and wrote to Althanasius Kircher twice and asking him for his input and Kircher wanted the book itself. So you look at it and and Buresch was never willing to do that. But then when he died, he welded to his friend Johannes Marcy and of Cronland the store.

And he went to him who almost immediately gave it to to to Kircher to Kircher because he felt like Kircher was the only guy who to be able to make heads or tails out of it. That's okay. That that explains the gaps that I couldn't. Yeah, I couldn't quite pin down. So Kircher. Yeah, you know, wound up in one of what I guess it was destiny. Yeah, destiny for the next couple of centuries. We're talking 250 plus years. We don't know where it was. It's believed that the Jesuits had it.

And that they moved it around Europe from place to place. Why are how is unknown? Well, they're pretty good at keeping records. Yes.

At saying we don't know if this is important or not, but it looks like it might be. So we're going to just hang on to it. Yeah, I'll just put it in the back corner. Yeah, that's what I'm going to say. I can imagine myself just rooting around my basement two boxes and like, oh, there it is.

I mean, you wouldn't believe I was down in my basement the other day. That's last weekend doing a little house cleaning and getting and going to stuff. And I found stuff I totally forgot. I ever owned.

Yeah, it's like, oh, wow. It's a joy of having a basement. Oh, yeah. Let's see from there. As we said, 1912 Wilford Voynich purchases the book. We don't know where he gets it from.

Or I don't know. I know he purchased it, but I don't remember exactly where he got it. I believe he bought it in Italy. Did he? Yeah. I'll run with that because I can't remember exactly where.

When he died, he gave it to he, I believe, willed it to his wife, Ethel, who then gave it to a woman named Ann Nill, who then sold it in 1961 to a man by the name of HP Kraus.

In 1969 Kraus donated it to Yale University's bynichy rare book and manuscript library. So Yale has it. So Yale has it today for now. They still have it today.

Yeah, for now. Yeah. So that's it. And that's where it is. That's where they're they've done a great job of getting good photos of it and making it available.

Yeah, but it's a several-year-old, a hundred-year-old tech. So we don't want everybody leafing through it constantly.

Oh, yeah. I'm sure it's under load.

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