Before You Read - Writing in Code

A. Think about answers to these questions.

1. Why do people use codes? What kinds of things do people write in code?
   Answer

   Answers will vary. Possible answers include: the military (to protect confidential information); postal codes are used in many countries to make addresses easier to locate; Braille-the reading and writing system for blind people-is a kind of code;: barcodes are used on products; businesses might use encoded data to protect products they are developing from their competitors; etc.

2. Have you and a friend ever had a secret code or language?
   Answer

   Answers will vary. Remind students that a code does not have to be complicated or long. It could be a single word whose meaning is a secret to most.

B. Discuss your answers with a partner.

The World's Most Mysterious Manuscript¹

In 1912, book dealer Wilfrid Voynich bought a number of books in Italy. He bought so many that he didn't look very closely at the books he was purchasing. When he got home, he discovered he had bought a very strange handwritten manuscript. It was written in a language he had never seen before. It was also full of pictures of plants.

Since then,the book-now known as the Voynich Manuscript-has become known as the world's most mysterious manuscript. It has been studied by many people, including professors, codebreakers, and language experts. However, no one has ever discovered its meaning or author

There are many ideas about who wrote it and why. Some people say that a famous scientist like Francis Bacon wrote it. Other people think it could be a religious text.² Some other people think the manuscript is a great hoax and doesn't mean anything at all.

Scientists have learned that the manuscript was made between 1404 and 1438. However, this only tells us how old the paper is, not when the book was written. But there's still hope that the manuscript is real and that there's meaning to its words.

The Voynich Manuscript remains a mystery today, but the pages are on the Internet if you would like to try to crack the code.