Nyctograph on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
Nyctography is a form of
/ref> Initially, Carroll used an oblong of card with an oblong cut out of the centre to guide his writing in the dark. This did not appear to be satisfactory as the results were illegible. The new and final version of the nyctograph is recorded in his journal of September 24, 1891, and is the subject of a letter to ''The Lady'' magazine of October 29, 1891: From the description it appears that Carroll’s nyctograph was a single row of 16 boxes cut from a piece of card. Carroll would enter one of his symbols in each box, then move the card down to the next line (which, in the darkness, probably, he would have to estimate) and then repeat the process.
Each character had a large dot or circle in the upper-left corner. Beside the 26 letters of the alphabet, there were five additional characters for 'and', 'the', the corners of the letter 'f' to indicate that the following characters were digits ('figures'), the corners of the letter 'l' to indicate that they were letters, and the corners of the letter 'd' to indicate that the following six characters were a date in DDMMYY format. There was no capitalization, punctuation or digits ''per se'', though modern font designers have created them (e.g. capitals may be double-scored, punctuation marks may have the large dot at the bottom right corner, digits at the bottom left).
Alice's Adventures in Carroll's Own Square Alphabet — Lewis Carroll Society of North America
Nyctograph Machine printer
History of technology Works by Lewis Carroll Writing systems Writing systems introduced in the 1890s 1891 in England
Nyctography is a form of substitution cipher
In cryptography, a substitution cipher is a method of encrypting in which units of plaintext are replaced with the ciphertext, in a defined manner, with the help of a key; the "units" may be single letters (the most common), pairs of letters, trip ...
writing created by Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequel ...
(Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) in 1891.
Nyctography is written with a nyctograph (also invented by Carroll) and uses a system of dots and strokes all based on a dot placed in the upper left corner. Using the Nyctograph, one could quickly jot down ideas or notes without the aid of light.
Carroll invented the Nyctograph and Nyctography because he was often awakened during the night with thoughts that needed to be written down immediately, and didn't want to go through the lengthy process of lighting a lamp just to have to extinguish it shortly thereafter.
Nyctograph
The device consisted of a gridded card with sixteen square holes, each a quarter inch wide, and system of symbols representing an alphabet of Carroll's design, which could then be transcribed the following day. He first named it "typhlograph" from , ("blind"), but at the suggestion of one of his brother-students, this was subsequently changed into "Nyctograph".“The Life And Letters Of Lewis Carroll (Rev. C. L. Dodgson)” by Stuart Dodgson Collingwood B.A. Christ Church, Oxford/ref> Initially, Carroll used an oblong of card with an oblong cut out of the centre to guide his writing in the dark. This did not appear to be satisfactory as the results were illegible. The new and final version of the nyctograph is recorded in his journal of September 24, 1891, and is the subject of a letter to ''The Lady'' magazine of October 29, 1891: From the description it appears that Carroll’s nyctograph was a single row of 16 boxes cut from a piece of card. Carroll would enter one of his symbols in each box, then move the card down to the next line (which, in the darkness, probably, he would have to estimate) and then repeat the process.
Nyctographic alphabet
Each character had a large dot or circle in the upper-left corner. Beside the 26 letters of the alphabet, there were five additional characters for 'and', 'the', the corners of the letter 'f' to indicate that the following characters were digits ('figures'), the corners of the letter 'l' to indicate that they were letters, and the corners of the letter 'd' to indicate that the following six characters were a date in DDMMYY format. There was no capitalization, punctuation or digits ''per se'', though modern font designers have created them (e.g. capitals may be double-scored, punctuation marks may have the large dot at the bottom right corner, digits at the bottom left).
Numbers
Letters were assigned to represent digits. The values were taken from hisMemoria Technica
Memoria was the term for aspects involving memory in Western classical rhetoric. The word is Latin, and can be translated as "memory".
It was one of five canons in classical rhetoric (the others being inventio, dispositio, elocutio, and pronunti ...
, which assigned two consonants to each digit, with vowels unassigned, so that any number could be read off as a word. For nyctography, one of the consonants was used for each digit. Most are the initials of the numerals, as follows. (In brackets are the other values of the Memoria Technica, which apart from leftover ''j'' for 3 have their own motivations.)
* 1 – b (first consonant) lso c* 2 – d (for ''duo'' and ''deux'') lso w of 'two'* 3 – t (for 'three') lso j* 4 – f (for 'four') lso q of ''quatre''* 5 – l (roman numeral 50) lso v of 'five'* 6 – s (for 'six') lso x of 'six'* 7 – m (final of ''septem'') lso p of ''septem''* 8 – h (for ''huit'') lso k* 9 – n (for 'nine') lso g* 0 – z (for 'zero') lso r of 'zero'See also
*Pigpen cipher
The pigpen cipher (alternatively referred to as the masonic cipher, Freemason's cipher, Napoleon cipher, and tic-tac-toe cipher)Barker, p. 40Wrixon, p. 27 is a geometric simple substitution cipher, which exchanges letters for symbols which are fr ...
* Night writing
Night writing is the name given to a form of writing invented by Charles Barbier as one of a dozen forms of alternative writing presented in a book published in 1815: ''Essai sur Divers Procédés D'Expéditive Française, Contenant douze écritu ...
References
External links
{{Commons category, NyctographyAlice's Adventures in Carroll's Own Square Alphabet — Lewis Carroll Society of North America
Nyctograph Machine printer
History of technology Works by Lewis Carroll Writing systems Writing systems introduced in the 1890s 1891 in England