SOURCE: "The Forerunner of Modern Science," in The Cipher of Roger Bacon, edited by Roland Grubb Kent, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1928, pp. 1-28.

Newbold was the Adam Seybert Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania until his death in 1926. He was a master at decoding ciphers, a lifelong passion, and he spent considerable time and industry deciphering the Voynich Manuscript—a discourse on natural science by Bacon, written in cipher, and purchased in or about 1912 by Wilfrid M. Voynich, a specialist in rare books and manuscripts. Newbold lectured on the Voynich Manuscript in 1921 before the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, and his remarks were published in the College's Transactions that same year. This same lecture was later published in his Cipher of Roger Bacon (1928). In the following chapter from that work, Newbold provides a detailed, enthusiastic overview of Bacon's accomplishment, hailing him as the...