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Isaac Newton's Notes Digitized
First time accepted submitter nhstar writes with an excerpt from an article in the Register: "If you're looking for a bit of light reading this holiday season, Cambridge University is here to help: they've digitized and made available online over 4,000 pages of the pioneering scientist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton's most important works. 'Anyone, wherever they are, can see at the click of a mouse how Newton worked and how he went about developing his theories and experiments,' Cambridge University Library's digitization manager Grant Young told the BBC."
Being able to develop theories, without worrying some lawyer will come pounding on your door, claiming you are infringing this copyright or that patent.
Dear Sir, it would pleasure us if you would cease and desist with observations on gravity as our client holds the patent on Apples Falling From Trees And Striking A Person Upon The Head. Should you continue with in your present direction we shall have you summoned to the King's Court and sort you out. Dewey, Cheatham & Howe, LLP
Of course they had their battles, who stole an idea from who, but it was usually sorted out with a lot of yelling and smearing of reputation, rather than getting solicitors involved.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
> The remainder of the Newton papers, many concerned with alchemy, theology and chronology, were returned to Lord Portsmouth.
Anyone know how many pages did he spend on physics and how many did he spend writing the rest of the subjects?
Would be interesting to see his insights on what he thought about other subjects ...
Yes. He was warden of the Royal Mint and had a great impact on modern coinage, but you don't hear a lot about that.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
As far as I can tell:
1. You can't link to a specific page in the archive, which makes sharing a bit tricky; and
2. You can't download full-resolution pages.
Still a useful resource to have, but it's a bit unfortunate that these kinds of digitization projects seem to always want to roll-their-own slightly opaque interface.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The interesting part of this release is not that book, but the notebooks, so the link in the story is correct.
the masses: we need digitize our books. google is doing it, why cant we?
library admin: i understand. let me find a vendor.
vendor a: our product costs 5 billion
vendor b: our product cost 8 billion, but we will give you kickbacks
vendor c: our product cost 3 billion
library admin: dear management, i need 8 billion dollars
management: wow cool. so we can be like a real business right? ive always wanted to play business man and make a profit
library admin: yes, we will own copyright on all materials, and our special interface will provide centralized control so we can keep out the riff raff
hippie: but arent you a taxpayer funded institution whose job is to disseminate information as efficiently as possible?
management: have the hippie shot
library admin: consider it done
4 years later...
library admin + manager: press release! our new surfable hierarchy tiered book access gateway (SHiTBAG) allows students all over the country to improve their lea blah blah blah blah blah
oracle sales manager: so, we are looking at a 4 year contract, and that will be 50,000 seats, so basically we are looking at 10 billion dollars
libray admin: awesome. the more money i am in control of, the more power i have inside the bureaucracy. ps, can i get an invite to your sweet conference in boca this year?
users: what the fuck is this shit? java plugin has crashed? please set your JAVA HOME? what the fuck is JAVA HOME?
users buddy: nevermind all that, let me show you this thing called 'bit torrent'
There have been a number of other notable manuscript digitization projects of late:
British Libraries Digitised Manuscripts
http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/
"Homer Multitext" - several manuscripts including Venetus A
http://www.homermultitext.org/
The Archimedes Palimpsest
http://www.archimedespalimpsest.org/
Personally I think such projects are absolutely vital to the long term preservation of these manuscripts. Modern technology makes possible the duplication of these source documents in high fidelity facsimile (Taschen in particular has published a number of fascinating editions, including Blaeu's Atlas Maior - another example would be The Book of Michael of Rhodes from MIT Press). So often works survive only as a copy of a copy of a copy, and we are left to peer through the murky glass of multiple interpertations at the far distant original author's intent. (The current definitive edition of Euclid, for example, is available to us only because of a single surviving early copy in the Vatican's library (which so far as I know has not been digitized, unfortunately, except for a couple images here: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/vatican/math.html).)
We should be scanning and then printing many copies of these early works and depositing them in libraries around the world in order to help these early glimpses into our history survive (at least in SOME form, even if the originals are lost). Of course, multiple copies of the digital data is also very important, but we have no way of knowing how well digital data will survive on thousand-year time scales. Fingers crossed that we will see multiple volume facsimilie copies of Newton's notebooks (one volume for the facsimile, one for a modern translation ) on Amazon in the next few years...
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Well, it depends on whether you view light as a wave or a particle.
May the Maths Be with you!
You're more likely to see a recipe for Apple Pie...
We show geeks how to get their dream girl at EyesOfOdessa.com
Newton was a prolific writer and wrote more on theology than anything else (he was a theologean as well as a scientist, alchemist, etc), one example is that he wrote almost a million words looking for meaning in the numerology of 666, including a 6X6 magic square that contained only primes and summed to 666 on each row, column, and diagonal. He also claimed that "Jesus was sent to Earth to operate the levers of gravity". He is remebered for his undeniable genius in science, most of his other writings are (by modern standards) the ramblings of a madman.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Unless you're like me and got through The System of the World. I wonder how many other slashdotters can attribute 90% of what they know about Newton to Neal Stephenson?
I thought I had a vague idea of Newton's clinical shyness, but Stephenson's picture is vastly more informative and interesting. No idea how truly accurate it is, but I'd guess quite a bit.
Highly recommend reading if you haven't: The Baroque Cycle
www.sci-ku.com
Yeah, well, he had plenty of time to learn Latin since he didn't have to take Calculus in high school!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
It's not fucking funny because fucking Newton did not invent fucking calculus. FUCK YOU!
Regards,
G. Leibniz
Of course he wrote it in Latin - Latin was the standard language for academic discourse in his time, and as an educated man he was expected to know it and use it in his published works. The big advantage of this was that it made it relatively easy for him to communicate with his counterparts in other countries - for instance, Gottfried Leibniz also wrote mostly Latin.
I am officially gone from
I'm not ok with it. I find it extremely offensive.
The funding was already provided, by a donation of 1.5 GBP, so all the costs have already been covered. Work funded by the public should be in the public domain, and I think that should be made a law. Additionally, it's public domain content, which IMO should be illegal to restrict.
It's fundamentally unethical to take public money and then double-charge the public by putting restrictions on the result.
Newton spoke English (17th century English) and so his notes are in that ...but this is Pre-Johnson's Dictionary so there is no standard English and no standard spelling so he wrote in Lincolnshire/Cambridge English ...Because of this most published works were written in Latin which did have standard spelling and could read by most intellectual Europeans
Puteulanus fenestra mortis