Roger Bacon's Gunpowder Formula as Revealed in the Harley MS 3528

Roger Bacon is credited with giving one of the earliest compositions for gunpowder. His formula was based a document translating his work some 400 years after his death (Link-> Dee's translation of Bacon's "Epistola de Secretis Operibus Artis et Naturae et de Nullitate Magiae") and a decoding of the anagram in the translated document about 400 more years later (Link-> Hime's "Gunpowder and Ammunition Their Origin and Progress"). The formula received criticism for being unlikely to produce the effects associated with gunpowder. Steele took umbrage to anagram and Hime's interpretation (Link-> “Luru Vopo Vir Can Utriet” in Nature) as it seems an unfair direct criticism of Bacon. Steele presented a similar passage from the Harley MS 3528 that had a less obscured formula, although it still appeared obfuscated. The document in this blog will present the results of investigating and decoding the Harleian MS text to determine a formula (potassium nitrate 68.4%, charcoal 15.8% and sulfur 15.8%) (Link-> Translation of Roger Bacon’s Gunpowder Formula in the Harley Manuscript 3528). 

Bacon believed that some information was so important that it should be kept hidden by cryptic methods. Since he used multiple methods of obfuscation and not a unified method of encryption, any meaning decoded is open to interpretation and will lead to varying opinions. His approach does have as a consequence that enough piecemeal information may be decoded so that a likely but not necessarily complete determination can be made of his intent. The decoding presented is suggestive of his intent and is given so that others may develop it further. The document includes learned and discovered information in the progress to decoding the formula. Some of what was found and its interpretation may be new and useful beyond the simple interpretation of the formula for gunpowder. 

Since scholars, who write in Latin with Medieval script, is far afield from my expertise, there was a significant learning curve. What is presented is subject to all the ills that may result from an untrained novice's foray into a new field. Not all of what was found was included, only that which seems likely to be of value to those with interests in this area.

Outlook Repeating Alarm for Newly Received Email

 

VBA code was written to make the arrival of new emails more obvious with a more intrusive message box and continuous sound (Link->Outlook Repeating Alarm for New Email). The message box and sound will continue until the message box is acknowledged or times out. An alarm for the email can be set to repeat from either the message box or by letting the message box time out. The repeating sound and message box can be dismissed in the message box or by taking action to handle the email (deleting, moving or reading the email). Two sets of code are listed. “CODE MINIMAL” contains few features. “CODE” contains has more features that are selectable by altering the code. This was written for Outlook 2007 running in Windows 10. The message box time out uses an undocumented feature in the user32 library (alias MessageBoxTimeoutA). It has been available since Windows 7 but there is not guarantee it will remain available.

Windows Notepad Icons Become White Blank Looking Document Page

In Windows 10, files and shortcuts that had a Notepad icon changed and the new icon appeared to be a blank white document page. For my computer, this was notice around 01/10/21. The “Site” (https://www.winhelponline.com/blog/change-default-icon-file-type-windows/) was helpful used in finding a resolution. The resolution fixing the problem was to edit the registry value from HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\txtfile\DefaultIcon\%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll,-102 to %SystemRoot%\system32\notepad.exe,-2. The DefaultIcon and the file it is located in have changed with versions of Windows. In some of the newer versions of the files referenced for the default icon, the icon referenced was not present. Associating applications to file extensions in Windows 10 settings is immediate but is not necessarily reflected in some registry key values after a registry refresh or reboot. The value in the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.txt\UserChoice\ProgId\ on my computer was textfile. This value was txtfile on the “Site”. This entry could not be edited because of permissions so it could not have been inadvertently changed during the attempts to fix the problem. The permissions were changed and it was edited to txtfile. A more detailed discussion is at (Link->)White Icon Blog Page

 

ASTM D2502 Calculation of Petroleum Oil Molecular Weight

ASTM D2502 has a chart that is used to estimate the molecular weight of a petroleum oil based on two viscosities of the oil.  The chart requires several estimation and interpolations, which can introduce mistakes.  A calculation from mid 1985 using the 2 viscosities is presented (LINK->Calculation of a Petroleum Oil Molecular Weight). The calculated molecular weights compared to the ones determined from the chart have a difference of 2.3 standard deviations.  The calculation is valid for the entire chart. The Microsoft document is available by contacting the author for a Dropbox link.

An Excel workbook (MWPetOilFrom2Vis_VisCalcs.xlsm) and the exported VBA module (MWPetOilFrom2Vis_VisCalcs.bas) are available.  The function MW40_100 calculates the molecular weight from cSt viscosities at 40C and 100C. It converts the viscosities and checks if they are within the bounds of the chart.

DoE Document Describing the Method

The document "Using Design of Experiment Methods for Screening and Optimization of Factors when Results are Qualitative" had been uploaded and published to the WEB through Google Docs 2 months ago.  It did not seemed to be indexed.  A new versions has been uploaded and can be viewed on Google Docs.  It can also be viewed on this LINK-> blog   . Both have the same content.  The links in the other post Wed. August 7, 2019 are the same as in this post. 8/28/20 links to Google Docs removed.

Update to Windows Performance Counter Event Errors

After installing all the performance counters that could be found for the services listed by lodctr /Q, a event viewer logged a couple of events associated with the performance counters.  This was used as an opportunity to run lodctr /R to check its affect on installed counters.  Some counter were lost. This is listed under Update 20190122 in LINK-> Performance Counter Event Errors

DoE, Great if Results aren't Qualitative and a Model Can Be Made

LINK-> (Using Design of Experiment Methods for Screening and Optimization of Quantitative Factors when Results are Qualitative) details the sequential use of traditional DOE (vertices generations and optimality selection) to generate a small set of trial experiments from the number of factors.  The best result from a set of experiments is used as the starting point for the next series of experiments.  It will eliminate unnecessary ones and optimize the others (screening and optimization) .  Its primary use is for situations when quantitative results are to difficult, impossible or time consuming to obtain or when a mathematical model of the system cannot be determined or it is not clear how to weight multiple responses.