Writing Backwards

Did you know that one of the greatest artists and inventors who ever lived wrote almost all of his notes backwards? Leonardo da Vinci — the man who painted the Mona Lisa and designed flying machines in the 1400s — filled over 13,000 pages of notebooks in mirror writing. You had to hold the pages up to a mirror to read them. Today, we study his secret writing style as one of the earliest examples of a simple code!

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to: • Explain what mirror writing (writing backwards) is • Write a simple backwards message yourself • Understand why people use secret codes • Decode a backwards message using a mirror or by reading right-to-left

A code is a way of changing a message so that only the right person can read it. People have used codes for thousands of years. Soldiers used codes so enemies could not read their battle plans. Friends use codes to pass notes in secret. Spies use codes to share information safely. One of the simplest codes in the world is also one of the oldest: writing your message backwards. Instead of writing HELLO, you write OLLEH. The message is still there — it just looks different to anyone who does not know the trick!

Leonardo da Vinci was born in Italy in 1452. He was left-handed, and some scientists think that is part of why he wrote from right to left — it may have felt more natural and kept his hand from smearing wet ink as it moved across the page. But mirror writing also acted as a simple code. His notes on inventions, the human body, and art were hard for most people to read quickly. He studied how bodies work, designed early flying machines and armored vehicles, and painted masterpieces — keeping it all in his secret backwards notebooks. When you hold one of Leonardo's notebook pages up to a mirror, the words flip and suddenly become perfectly readable in normal left-to-right order. You have just decoded a 500-year-old message!

Here is how to write a mirror-writing message in five steps: STEP 1: Write your message normally. For example: I LOVE PIZZA STEP 2: Write each word with its letters in reverse order. I stays I. LOVE becomes EVOL. PIZZA becomes AZZIP. STEP 3: Also write the words from right to left across the page, so you start on the right side instead of the left. STEP 4: Your finished message looks like this written from right to left: AZZIP EVOL I STEP 5: Test it! Hold the paper up to a mirror and you should be able to read I LOVE PIZZA clearly. Once you practice, you can get so good at mirror writing that you do it quickly without even thinking — just like Leonardo did every single day.