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Leonardo Da Vinci's Personal Notebook

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the pages-of-history dept.

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."

7 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. British surgeon cracks da Vinci code by $exyNerdie · · Score: 3, Interesting

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

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

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

  2. Not the only treasure by Junior+J.+Junior+III · · Score: 4, Interesting

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

    --
    You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
  3. Re:Needs Shockwave by Seehund · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "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.

    --
    Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
  4. you know why? by spectrokid · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    --

    10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then

    1. Re:you know why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

  5. Format of the pages by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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 actually explored this so these could be Flash alternatives - gawd, hopefully not) There's also an link to make comments via email about the "Turning the Pages" site. That is a wonderful opportunity for everyone to persuade the designers to use a more friendly format and ditch the Flash/Shockwave crap.

  6. www.bl.uk by rkww · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.