Leonardo notebooks reunited online

Two of the great landmarks of world culture and science, Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Arundel and Codex Leicester, have been brought together digitally for the first time since the dispersal of Leonardo’s manuscripts in the sixteenth-century…Codex Arundel, one of the British Library’s greatest treasures, and Codex Leicester, which is owned by Bill Gates, are compilations of the notes, diagrams and sketches Leonardo made while investigating subjects ranging from mechanics and engineering to optics and the properties of the moon. They document the inquiring scientific spirit that underpinned his artistic achievements and include discoveries and lines of thought that were far ahead of their time.

These precious manuscripts are kept under secure and controlled conditions in locations thousands of miles apart, but Turning the Pages 2.0 allows users to browse high resolution online versions of both texts, compare the volumes side-by-side in a 3-D workspace, magnify and rotate the pages and even reverse Leonardo’s famous ‘mirror writing’ so that it reads the right way around.

Direct to Turn the Pages 2.0
Review the books one page at a time. Very cool.

Source: BL

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 and is filed under Databases, Directories, and Guides, Digital Preservation, Digitization Projects, History, Preservation/Conservation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.