Leonardo Da Vinci's Personal Notebook

IZ Reloaded writes "The British Library has made available 14 great books on its website. One of them is a 1508 notebook by Leonardo Da Vinci containing short treatises, notes and drawings of a wide range of subjects from mechanics to the moon. The site allows you to view the original manuscript written in Leonardo's own handwriting."

Backward handwriting

[mr100percent]

Will I have to flip my display to read Leonardo Da Vinci's backwards handwriting?

Re:Backward handwriting

[kalidasa]

Ready for this one - they actually have a "mirror" button to flip it over for you! Now that's nice.

Fantastic! Now if I only...

[Hamster Lover]

could read Italian. Maybe we should run the result through Babelfish...

Re:Backward handwriting

[ArsonSmith]

No that takes you to another source in cast the server is over loaded.

Re:Backward handwriting

[legirons]

Apparently, he only wrote "click here to download plugin" lots of times... very neat handwriting, although I can't see how it could be interpreted as the design for a helicopter

you know why?

[spectrokid]

It is often said he was using this to encrypt his writings, but this is BS. Da Vinci was left-handed and in order not to wipe out his own writing he just wrote right to left. When he had to write to others, he simply switched back to normal.

Re:you know why?

[Anonymous Coward]

During art history class when the professor mentioned da Vinci's "code" a student at the university I attended commented "perhaps he was dyslexic". While the student made this comment he was writing class notes with his left hand from right to left at the same time he was writing an essay for another class with his right hand from left to right and yes, this was a frequent habit of that particular dyslexic student.

Re:you know why?

[EtherealStrife]

Are you sure he said *dyslexic* and not epileptic [wikipedia.org]?

Clues!

[Eugene Webby]

Bet it has clues about jesus and coverups.

i'm sure...

[tehwebguy]

it was probably a powerbook. those artsy types are all the same.

Re:i'm sure...

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

No, he used something called "paper" and "pencil". IMO we should start using those again. How practical it would, being able to write and read stuff without worrying about a battery.

Sure, but...

[hummassa]

seek & search times are a bitch on those.

Re:i'm sure...

[krewemaynard]

Back in my day, we had to chisel everything into stone! If you had to write an essay for class, when you were done your hands would be nothing but bloody calloused lumps! And we liked it! We LOVED it! We wouldn't have changed a thing!

I guess you ride either a horse or a bike too, seeing as how practical it is not having to worry about using gas?

Re:i'm sure...

[NoOneInParticular]

Actually, I'm doing that right now. I'm working together on a project with one other developer (I'm kind of the architect/designer/co-developer of the product), and I'm continuously pushing to him small sketches of UI using only pencil and paper. Much faster than actually creating a design document or a mockup (5 mins. versus 1 hour). I'm planning on putting all these sketches into a design 'book' at some point, just to prove a point. I've got about 5 A4s now. Information worth: about 40 pages of painstacki

Re:i'm sure...

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

I've been reading some books on UML lately and one recommended to draw the schemas on a whiteboard before a meeting, have them modified during and then afterwards digitized with a digital camera.

Re:i'm sure...

[nganju]

Using Moore's Law and assuming today's fastest notebook is roughly 3GHz:

3 000 000 000 * ((1/2)^((2005 - 1508) / 1.5)) = 5.44313816 × 10-91 Hz ...was the clock speed of Davinci's powerbook. And you think YOUR notebook loads Adobe slowly...

Re:i'm sure...

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Only +1 funny for that? Thers's no justice in the world (expecially on weekends).
d00d: that's hysterical.

British surgeon cracks da Vinci code

[$exyNerdie]

In other news today, a British surgeon cracks the Da Vinci code:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4289204.stm [bbc.co.uk]

Another version here:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_ page/0,5744,16753065%255E2703,00.html [news.com.au]

Re:British surgeon cracks da Vinci code

[Alwin Henseler]

From the linked bbc.co.uk article: "Mr Wells and Leonardo feature in The Secret of Drawing which begins on BBC Two on October 8."

Checked it on BBC text, that's today 20:10 UK time, just under 5 hours from time of this posting. Description: "The secret of drawing (new series): Andrew Graham-Dixon explores the influence that drawing has had on culture". No mention of Leonardo though, guess it's just a small part of the subject matter.

-- This message will self-destruct in 5 sec... ehm, hours.

Re:British surgeon cracks da Vinci code

[brian0918]

Thank you Captain Dupevious.

At last

[squoozer]

Of course they are only allowed to do this because the copyright period has just expired.

Re:At last

[Slashdiddly]

Fear not! I bet there is now a copyright on this particular scan.

Original?

[tepples]

I bet there is now a copyright on this particular scan.

Was there substantial new material added to each scan to make the additions an original work? If not, then no dice, at least under U.S. law.

Harmonisation

[tepples]

<sarcasm>Yeah, because U.S. law applies to the work of an Italian being shown by a British Library.</sarcasm>

It does when an alleged infringement of the British Library's alleged copyright occurs on United States soil. (Slashdot is on U.S. soil.) Besides, harmonisation and harmonization of the specifics of copyright law among Berne Convention party states have ensured that the rules for what counts as a new work are similar throughout the developed world. I used U.S. law as an example becaus

Needs Shockwave

[pipacs]

Needs Shockwave. Thank you, goodbye.

Re:Needs Shockwave

[the_unknown_soldier]

from their site:

There are also alternative [www.bl.uk] non-Shockwave versions of three of the volumes. More will be added soon.

Re:Needs Shockwave

[Seehund]

"Accessible version of the British Library's Turning the Pages system for viewing our great books."

So they do understand that the proprietary-plugin-dependent version is inaccessible! :)
Well, that's a start, I guess. Soon they might find out that it's unnecessary and pointless too.

Re:Needs Shockwave

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke]

What they've done is actually extremely useful - they've provided a perfect example of what Shockwave is NOT useful for.

The non-Shockwave version of the Lindisfarne Gospels work quite well (assuming that you open multiple pages in browser tabs, and zoom in and out of images as required).

Re:Needs Shockwave

[pipacs]

Thanks, but these are three unrelated books. Over time, hopefully...

Re:Needs Shockwave

[idonthack]

They don't have the DaVinci drawings in a non-Shockwave format. Just Golden Haggadah, Lindisfarne Gospels, and Blackwell's Herbal.
---
The only thing I hate more than a hypocrite is a person who hates hypocrites.
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Re:Needs Shockwave

[Reziac]

Except for the leetle problem that if you have javascript disabled, the non-flash page instantly refreshes back to the flash-only page. (If you're quick with the STOP button you can freeze it there, but if not.. round and round you go.)

Come on, folks, if you want to make something accessable, do it for everyone, not just for the "right" browser settings!

Re:Needs Shockwave

[kraut]

There's a shockwave-free link [www.bl.uk] for at least some of them.

Re:Needs Shockwave

[Reality Master 101]

Not being a luddite, I of course used the Shockwave version. If you had tried it also, you would've noted that there was a good reason for it: it includes a cool magnifier to view the pages, as well as some other neat features.

Thank god we have people out there that aren't afraid to use technology to make things better, even if a small number of people whine about it. If people like you ran the world, we'd still be stuck using 80x25 column green screens.

And, as other people have pointed out, there is an

Re:Needs Shockwave

[ScottyH]

I wish I had some mod points, because I want to mod you down badly, you close minded fool.

Re:Needs Shockwave

[codefreez]

Uhh, how is that close minded? The problem is, unless I'm mistaken, that non-Windows and MacOS users can't view this at all (at least without doing something like using the crossover plugin to run the shockwave player.)

Re:Needs Shockwave

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it seems a bit close-minded to get up in arms about what is less then 1% of the people viewing websites. The fact that they provided a rich environment to view these works is good. As in all business models trying to sort out the final 10% of a probelm is always dispraportinatly expensive.

You can always get the text from project guttenburg, but then that's not a rich environment.

Stop whinging, you made a choice for a small platform and so that has consiquences. It's people who criticise these projects

Re:Needs Shockwave

[Wolfbone]

"As in all business models trying to sort out the final 10% of a probelm is always dispraportinatly expensive."

The British Library is a (largely) publicly funded national resource, not a commercial entertainment and media company.

"Afterall they did not have to do anything other then show the books once every 20 years under glass in the British Library."

Yes - if the governing board decided that such a policy would count as fulfilling the purpose of the Library and its legal obligations under the British Libr

Re:Needs Shockwave

[Almost-Retired]

Nice, needs shockwave. Sure, hit the macromedia site, follow the shockwave links, and get told that a 20 day old mozilla-1.7.12 install is some oddball thing they don't support. "If running netscape, please upgrade to at least 6.1." Lemme see, that would be what, 5 years old now?

What time warp are these folks at macromedia living in?

--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
99.35% setiathome

Re:Needs Shockwave

[GiMP]

The odd thing is that while they have a Linux flash player, there is *still* no shockwave player for Linux... but I think we stopped complaining about that at least 5 years ago.

Re:Needs Shockwave

[Omniscientist]

Well, instead of complaining, does anyone have any tips for running Shockwave on Linux? Is it possible to use Wine or Cedega, or do we have to use something like Crossover?

Re:Needs Shockwave AND IE

[spiko-carpediem]

the new window won't even open on ff1.7.12

This is why...

[zegebbers]

the internet is amazing. To be able to view this sort of document almost instantly is fantastic. Thank you British Library.

For those who would otherwise not view these, please do, in addition to the items mtneioned int he summary, there are also originals from Jane Austen, Lewis Carroll and the first atlas of Europe. Amazing.

Great, but only the beginning....

[dr. loser]

This is a wonderful start to providing mass access to rare manuscripts.

Now if only they would post the complete papers of Milo Rambaldi [dayfornight.com]....

Re:Great, but only the beginning....

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps a better site [wikipedia.org] provides more information. Hope you didn't get suckered into believing it.

Re:Great, but only the beginning....

[dr. loser]

It was meant as a joke - guess I should've been a bit more explicit.

Not the only treasure

[Junior J. Junior III]

There's the original manuscript of Alice in Wonderland on there, too. Very cool!

Messy handwriting

[aussie_a]

Sheeesh, he had some messy handwriting. You think he could have taken a little care.

Re:Messy handwriting

[magarity]

he had some messy handwriting. You think he could have taken a little care.
 
You don't know many engineer/inventor types, do you?

Re:Messy handwriting

[magarity]

Score:2, Flamebait
 
And someone else obviously doesn't know a humorous ribbing when they see it.

Re:Messy handwriting

[6ame633k]

Your looking at HIS handwriting? I would hate to be judged on that - I havn't written anything by hand since the 8th grade.... I'm pretty sure he painted a few nice pictures too :)

A design document without use cases ?

[Anonymous Coward]

...with crappy graphics and in a unreadable language...

Bad Leonard !!
I'm sure this guy is a kernel developer

pdf

[rhyd]

godDamn motherfucking flash. If ever there was content perfect for pdf format it would be these books. I'd love to know the justification - probably to stop printing or something. No matter how lavishly illustrated a 14th century Hebrew manuscript might be, I am dubious that its going to contain any animated images, background music, or annoying soundeffects, or blinking text or any of the myriad of shiny accesibility-blocking nonsense that justifies macromedias devil-spawn. Personally i would have preferre

Re:pdf

[ScentCone]

rediculous

So it's not only diculous, it's re-diculous? That's twice as diculous!

Not to ridicule your spelling or anything, since your larger point feels about right. Plain HTML and simple images seem so much more sensible, and platform agnostic. But then, I'm an old-fashioned guy. I don't like

tags, either.

Re:pdf

[rhyd]

that is incorrect.
the correct spelling of rhyd-icule is :
r h y d i c u l e
rhyd-icule
now try :
spelling-nazi

Re:pdf

[Declarent]

I wasn't aware you could put voice commentary, the magnifier, and the text reversing mirror in a PDF document.

This is where we, as technophiles go wrong. The only thing that matters to us is the technology used to deliver the content, and we want the content to conform.

Everyone else wants the content to look and feel a certain way, and just select a tool out of the toolbox to make it so.

I think movies should be in PDF, too! One frame per page, that way everyone can see them without having to download a different tool!

It's not about the glass, it's about the water.

Accessible?

[tepples]

The only thing that matters to us is the technology used to deliver the content, and we want the content to conform.

What if some of us have a disability, and some technologies are designed to better accommodate disabilities than other technologies are?

I think movies should be in PDF, too!

That's called a "storyboard" or a "graphic novelization".

available via project gutenberg

[rillopy]

The complete notebooks have been available from project gutenberg for a year and a half (without the pictures) at: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5000 [gutenberg.org] It's also been on the top 100 list for a long time.

Re:available via project gutenberg

[kalidasa]

In an English translation. The MSS the BL is offering are facsimiles of the original with illustrations, in the original Italian.

If he was supposed to be so smart

[Mr. Neutron]

how come he didn't write in English?

Re:If he was supposed to be so smart

[Maqueo]

As you hopefully eventually might find out, a lot of smart people are unamerican ;)

What about Paul?

[writermike]

Why is "Paul is dead" written backwards on page three?

Does anyone know? [[shrugs]]

Notation in margin...

[TFGeditor]

...that Mona Lisa is such a bitch!

Great.. Shockwave.. Grrr

[nurb432]

Yet another thing i wont be viewing.

F-em

Re:Great.. Shockwave.. Grrr

[PornMaster]

Why do you feel the need to announce this?

You're a proud rebel?

Plenty of people had already mentioned that it was Shockwave. And I'm sure that the reason that you can't view Shockwave is one of choice...

Re:Great.. Shockwave.. Grrr

[nurb432]

Yes, its my choice. And they should choose to support me and not use that crap.

Re:Great.. Shockwave.. Grrr

[roadrunnerro]

Hmm - let's see: support whatever you're using [maybe an abacus or an ironing board - who knows..] or expend less resources and give proper features [zoom, mirror, pretty graphics] to the vast majority of computer users. Tough choice, ain't it?

Macromedia announced they don't plan on making a linux shockwave plugin - go make your own or, if you don't like that, go make a better alternative. Just go. <g,d>

In fascist italy...

[cached]

in Italia fascista, i taccuini li pubblicano

Re:In fascist italy...

[dedioste]

What do you mean?

Re:In fascist italy...

[jonbryce]

Translated from Italian to English

"In fascist Italy, the notebook publishes you."

Re:In fascist italy...

[dedioste]

mmm... babelfish?
Btw, the translation is wrong, it's "In fascist Italy, they publish notebooks"
Well, I'm Italian, so i understand the grammar of the message but I don't understand the meaning.
Most "italian misteries" (murders, bombs and so on) would be resolved if someone was to publish politician's notebooks.

Re:In fascist italy...

[jonbryce]

I understand it as an attempt at least at translating our "In Soviet Russia" joke.

Philosopher's stone

[Sattwic]

Bet some consipracy theories and books to come out now!

Awesome!

[Dirtside]

I hope there's something in there about the making of Titanic. I loved that movie.

what about the Necronomicon ?

[tyroneking]

I can't wait until that comes on-line; I'm booking my trip to the Arctic right now...

Re:what about the Necronomicon ?

[mattthomas]

Benatir! Cararkau! Dedos! Yog-Sothoth! [849pm.com]

Re:what about the Necronomicon ?

[tyroneking]

On my god! Sanity check ...

Da Vinci's Notebook

[Mr2001]

Most people remember Leonardo Da Vinci for his paintings and inventions, but did you know Da Vinci's Notebook also has history's first recorded biography of The Sneak [homestarrunner.com]?

Important draft work

[hotspotbloc]

It's amazing that atleast one of his earlier drafts [nyud.net] of his work at the Sistine Chapel [vatican.va] survived.

Let us give thanks to the FSM [wikipedia.org] for this miracle.

Re:Important draft work

[dedioste]

"It's amazing that at least one of his earlier drafts of his work at the Sistine Chapel survived."

It's even more amazing when you think that Michelangelo did the Decorations of the Sistine Chapel!

Re:Important draft work

[UserGoogol]

Yeah, they originally hired Leonardo, but then the Church wouldn't let him paint it because apparently the Flying Spaghetti Monster contradicts some bits of the Catholic dogma.

Damned heathens.

Re:Important draft work

[hotspotbloc]

Yeah, I realized that right after I hit submit but thought "it's /., who will know?" Besides, it let me get in a FSM joke. =)

Advent Of E-Books

[mercedo]

This is the very autoritative beginning of the advent of e-books, welcome!

Let's just hope...

[Bill Currie]

nobody swipes the book to extract Leonardo's DNA to produce an evil clone. No telling what he'll come up with to destroy the world.

Major Boost to Conspiracy Theorists

[donnacha]

One aspect of the notebooks sure to excite conspiracy theorists is the fact that 87% of the illustrations of Jesus' penis and Mary Magdelene's vagina.

Format of the pages

[Anonymous Coward]

I could not agree more about the goddamflash comments. I am not able to praise the guy who developed the Flashblock Firefox extension enough. This one single extension has improved the quality of my web life more than ANYTHING else in the past couple of years. To split hairs this website uses Shockwave not Flash per se - however the experience of shockwave is just as viral as flash. Same difference really. Note that the site does say that there are non shockwave versions of 3 of the books (haven't actuall

www.bl.uk

[rkww]

Notice how they've got a whole second level domain to themselves - not www.bl.co.uk or www.bl.gov.uk, just www.bl.uk.

The other notebook

[Naomi_the_butterfly]

I prefer the other Da Vinci's Notebook [tperkins.com]... (Get the MP3 here [tperkins.com]).

Is it mirrored?

[NaveNosnave]

Ha ha! Get it? Da Vinci...handwriting...mirrored [fineartforum.org]? Ah ha ha! I kill myself!

Warning. Macromedia-worm-plugin

[nazsco]

using opera8.5 and also with the latest firefox, the newest flash plugin for windows install macromedia shockwave plugin without telling you nothing! amazing.

Octavo

[ml10422]

If you're interested in historical books, check out Octavo. Dreamed up by John Warnock, they turn old books into high-quality PDFs:

http://octavo.com/ [octavo.com]

It's Leonardo, not da Vinci

[Cerdic]

da Vinci the name of the area where he lived. His name was simply Leonardo (this was before last names were used). Very common mistake almost everyone makes.

Plugin?

[tacocat]

This sucks!

There's no plugin for viewing these under Firefox. What a pain in the butt.

Why couldn't they just come with something that you can actually share?

oh wow

[BigBir3d]

discussion threads like this are why i avoid /. nowadays... a bunch of "purists" bitching about how some plugin they don't like, and probably only ever used back in the pre-1.0 days, is being used at the site in question. at least the brits are willing to put information of this caliber online. i thank them for it, and so should you.

Re:oh wow

[Craggles]

Or have NEVER used if they run Linux.

There is no Shockwave for Linux. It's got little to do with being purists, and more to do with it being a proprietary plugin, which is not supported on all platforms.

Re:It doesn't work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Write a nasty letter to the British Museum's tech department.
No need for Shockwave "Director" for displaying a few simple images.
Hell, porn sites manage streaming video just in flash.

And Java would work as well or better for both.

Anyway.
No, Macromedia has never released that for linux. Probably requires DirectX or something.

Re:Shockwave

[imsabbel]

Well, if they were available as pfds, they werent accessible at all for anybody besides schoolars that are intimate in his language and calligraphy.

The explaining texts and voiceovers are the real meat of this thing.

Re:Shockwave

[mikael]

If you visit the website, you can see they wanted to add various animation effects, including flicking to the previous and next pages, and having the paper around the wooden handles of a scroll appear to increase and decrease in diameter as the user moves through the document.

Re:MY NOTEBOOK SAYS:

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, show of hands:

Who thinks Slashdot need to give a breathalyzer test to users before they let you press the Submit button?

Re:Was Leo a geek or a nerd?

[unlabeledchick]

In my opinion, he was in a class of people that once existed, but do so no more, or are at least rare enough to be considered extinct. By today's standards he was probably both a geek and a nerd, but the variety of his ideas and creations have been exhibited, used and cherished far more than any recent geeks or nerds who have relatively one-track 'careers' by comparison. He seemed to have an understanding of our world greater than any other person, past or present (when taking into account the technological

Re:Fake !!

[mdecarle]

His code is hosted on SourceForge [sourceforge.net] !

Still in planning phase, although there's a lot of CVS commits already.