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CLAVIS
A Hinternet Foundation Online Course
This course explores one of the most improbable episodes in modern intellectual history. At its center stands the Riverbank Institute, the private research laboratory in the suburbs of Chicago, founded in 1909 by the industrialist George Fabyan, where Renaissance cryptography, experimental acoustics and agronomy, and military intelligence converged. Its most enduring intellectual obsession, however, was the Voynich Manuscript, the world’s most famous undeciphered text, which drew to Riverbank some of the greatest cryptanalytic minds of the 20th century. From this unlikely setting emerged the power-couple William and Elizebeth Friedman, pioneers of modern American cryptanalysis, whose careers permanently reshaped the study of codes and ciphers.
Following the intertwined histories of Riverbank and the Voynich Manuscript, the course examines an unmistakably American epistemology: the interplay of eccentric private initiative, scientific rigor, technological innovation, and state power in the pursuit of hidden knowledge. What began as an effort to discover secret messages in Shakespeare ultimately helped establish the principles of modern cryptography, whose influence extends from the First World War to the age of artificial intelligence.
Course Schedule
October 1: George Fabyan and Riverbank
George Fabyan (1867–1936) and the fortunes of the American Gilded Age — The founding of Riverbank Laboratories (1909) — Experimental biology, genetics, architecture, acoustics, and cryptography under one roof — Elizabeth Wells Gallup (1848–1934) and the Shakespeare authorship controversy — Why a private laboratory outside Chicago became the birthplace of American military cryptography.
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October, 8: Baconian Ciphers and the History of Secret Writing
Secret writing from antiquity to the Renaissance — Johannes Trithemius (1462–1516), Giambattista della Porta (1535–1615), Blaise de Vigenère (1523–1596), and Francis Bacon (1561–1626) — Bacon’s biliteral cipher — The Baconian movement in Britain and America during the nineteenth century — Shakespeare, cryptography, and the search for hidden authorship — Why the refutation of the Baconian theory proved more consequential than its defence.
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October 15: Before Voynich: The Early History of the Manuscript
The making of the manuscript (c. 1404–1438) — Script, imagery, codicology, and material evidence — Rudolf II, Jacobus de Tepenec, Georg Baresch, Johannes Marcus Marci, and Athanasius Kircher: the manuscript's early owners and custodians — Kircher, the Society of Jesus, and the Republic of Letters — Jesuit scholarship, Egyptology, and the origins of modern conspiracy theories — Roger Bacon (c. 1219/20–1292), John Dee (1527–1608/9), Edward Kelley (1555–1597), and other candidates for authorship.
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October 22: Meet the Voyniches
Wilfrid Voynich (1865–1930): revolutionary, exile, and antiquarian bookseller — George Boole (1815–1864) — Ethel Lilian Voynich, née Boole (1864–1960), The Gadfly (1897), and its extraordinary reception in the Soviet Union — The European rare-book trade at the turn of the twentieth century — The discovery of the Voynich Manuscript at the Villa Mondragone (1912) — Scientific investigation from the Friedmans to radiocarbon dating (2009) — The establishment of the manuscript as a fifteenth-century Northern Italian work.
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October 29: Meet the Friedmans
William F. Friedman (1891–1969) and Elizebeth Smith Friedman (1892–1980) at Riverbank during the First World War (1917–1918) — Elizabeth Wells Gallup’s Baconian cipher enterprise — Experiments on lunar influence and crop growth — Scientific agriculture, pseudoscience, and comparisons with Soviet Lysenkoism (1930s–1960s) — The birth of modern American cryptanalysis — The Friedmans’ lifelong engagement with the Voynich Manuscript, culminating in The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined (1957).
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November 5: From Riverbank to Silicon Valley
Riverbank Laboratories as the institutional cradle of modern American cryptanalysis — The Friedmans after Riverbank: military intelligence, codebreaking, and the professionalization of cryptology — From Baconian acrostics to Japanese diplomatic codes: the expanding ambitions of American cryptanalysis — The institutional legacy of Riverbank in the Signal Intelligence Service, the National Security Agency (1952), and the culture of secrecy — DARPA (1958), Silicon Valley, and the continuing American model of privately funded innovation in the service of national security.
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November 12: Secret Knowledge and Creative License
Why does the Voynich Manuscript attract such weirdos? — The manuscript in esoteric and conspiracy-theoretical context — Conspiracy theories and the social epistemology of mysterious objects — Artificial intelligence and the future of decipherment — Literary and artistic responses to the Voynich Manuscript — Fictional translation of the manuscript — Where does interpretation end and invention begin?
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Apply today
To apply for the course, please complete the form below and include:
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A one-page statement of interest, explaining why the course is of interest to you;
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A one-page biographical statement, explaining who you are and how you came to be who you are.
Accepted applicants will be invited to pay the one-time $250 registration fee.
Application Deadline: September 15