August 1, 2026
Code in bed, cause Victorian chaos
Nyctography: A substituton cypher by Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll’s midnight scribble hack has people itching to 3D-print one and relive childhood code obsessions
TLDR: Lewis Carroll invented Nyctography in 1891 so he could write down nighttime ideas without turning on a lamp, using a simple homemade writing guide and secret alphabet. The comments instantly turned it into maker-fuel and nostalgia bait, with people joking about 3D-printing one and remembering their own childhood code-language phases.
Lewis Carroll — yes, the Alice in Wonderland author — apparently got so annoyed by brilliant late-night thoughts vanishing by morning that he invented a way to write in the dark. His 1891 “Nyctography” used a card with little square holes and a made-up alphabet of dots and lines, letting him jot notes from under the blankets without lighting a lamp. It’s part sleep-deprived genius, part Victorian lifehack, and the comments absolutely ran with that vibe.
The biggest reaction? Instant maker energy. One commenter basically saw the whole thing and declared it an excellent excuse to pull out the 3-D printer, which feels like the modern internet’s version of “I can fix him.” The mood was less “what a quaint historical curiosity” and more “give me the files, I’m building this tonight.” Others got hit by a wave of nostalgic nerdery: one person said Carroll’s secret alphabet sent them straight back to childhood, when they taught themselves Tolkien’s runes from The Hobbit and got so good they could read and write them without a reference. Suddenly the thread wasn’t just about Carroll — it became a mini talent show for everyone who once invented, learned, or obsessed over secret writing systems.
And that’s the real juice here: people weren’t just discussing a quirky old cipher. They were projecting themselves into it — as makers, night-thinkers, fantasy kids, and proudly unserious code goblins. The jokes practically write themselves: Victorian insomnia meets Etsy-core gadget culture, with a side of “everyone online was one weird alphabet away from becoming a wizard.”
Key Points
- •Nyctography is a simple substitution cipher writing system created by Lewis Carroll in 1891.
- •Carroll invented the nyctograph so he could record ideas at night without lighting a lamp.
- •The nyctograph consisted of a gridded card with 16 square holes, each about a quarter inch wide, used to guide writing in the dark.
- •Carroll revised earlier designs after finding them illegible and adopted a square alphabet built from corner dots and side lines.
- •Each nyctographic character used a prominent dot in the upper-left corner, and Carroll said 23 symbols resembled the letters they represented.