William Blair (28 January 1766 – 6 December 1822) was an English surgeon with an interest in ciphers and stenography.
He took a house in the neighbourhood of Colchester, but before the preparations for removing were completed he was seized with illness, and died at his residence in Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury on 6 December 1822.
[3] William Blair's portrait was painted by and presented to the Bloomsbury Dispensary by Henry Meyer.
[4] Blair was greatly interested in ciphers and stenography and wrote articles about the subject in Rees's Cyclopædia.
David Kahn, in his work The Code breakers (1967),[5] characterized Blair's "superb article" as "the finest treatise in English on cryptology" until Parker Hitt's military manual was published by the U.S. Army in 1916.