Nyctography is a substitution cipher for English created by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) in 1891. He often woke during the night with ideas he wanted to jot down, didn't want to go to the trouble of lighting a lamp or candle. So he created this alphabet that he could write in the dark, and a device he called a nyctograph to help him to write legibly. The nyctograph was an oblong piece of card with 16 square holes in it that he used as a guide for writing, like a stencil.
At first he called it typhlograph, from Ancient Greek τῠφλός (tuphlós - blind) and γραφή (graphḗ - writing, drawing), then as a result of a suggestion from a friend, he changed the name to nyctograph, from Ancient Greek νύξ (núx - night). It is also known as the Nyctographic Alphabet or the Nyctographic Square Alphabet.
Download an alphabet chart for Nyctography (Excel)
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice “without pictures or conversations?”
from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
An edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in the Nyctographic Square Alphabet is available from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
Information about Nyctography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyctography
https://www.dcode.fr/nyctography-lewis-carroll
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2013/10/09/the-nyctograph/
https://www.lewiscarroll.org/2012/02/07/alices-adventures-in-carrolls-own-square-alphabet/
Nyctographic font
https://www.dafont.com/nyctographic.font
Nyctographic convertor
https://nyctotyper.netlify.app/
A version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is available in Nyctography.
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