Leonardo's Notebook Digitized in All Its Befuddling Glory(theatlantic.com)
theatlantic.com
Leonardo's Notebook Digitized in All Its Befuddling Glory
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/02/leonardos-notebook-digitized-in-all-its-befuddling-glory/273042/
25 comments
One of the greatest treasures of Western scholarship has been made available for the public to view at their leisure, in such stunning high resolution that you can zoom into the very grain of the paper.
Absolutely anyone with a web browser can instantly access what was once available only to a select few scholars, and even then only under the least convenient of circumstances.
A mere handful of years ago, the only way the average person would have even seen one of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks would be in a museum display, assuming they knew of the display, had the wherewithal to visit, and the resources to get there if it wasn't in their own city.
Now, the British Museum has made literally hundreds of priceless manuscripts, from da Vinci to Beowulf, available to even the most casual reader who happens to click on a link, thanks to their careful preservation, curation, and digitization, all at no cost to the viewer.
What's the response? Complaining. "Yes, fine, but I wanted to _download_ it, not just see it!"
Yup, this is the Internet, alright.
Absolutely anyone with a web browser can instantly access what was once available only to a select few scholars, and even then only under the least convenient of circumstances.
A mere handful of years ago, the only way the average person would have even seen one of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks would be in a museum display, assuming they knew of the display, had the wherewithal to visit, and the resources to get there if it wasn't in their own city.
Now, the British Museum has made literally hundreds of priceless manuscripts, from da Vinci to Beowulf, available to even the most casual reader who happens to click on a link, thanks to their careful preservation, curation, and digitization, all at no cost to the viewer.
What's the response? Complaining. "Yes, fine, but I wanted to _download_ it, not just see it!"
Yup, this is the Internet, alright.
Complaining is the main source of progress. The British Museum wouldn't have done this without anyone complaining. The British Museum wouldn't even exist without anyone complaining "but we need to save all this knowledge ..." and so on. People always lament the complaining but never praise it as the source of progress it is.
If the image viewer they chose wasn't garbage I'd be okay with only being able to browse online.
It's a humongous, impressive step that the notebook has been digitized and made publicly available. Surely the step to be able to download is only a trivial slight further step, the flicking of a switch, that has been prevented probably just for some bureaucratic reason.
Started poking around. Here's one chunk of one of the pages at one of the higher resolutions:
http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Proxy.ashx?view=arundel_ms_263_...
Looks like the format is:
At resolution 14, columns range from 0 to 33 and rows range from 0 to 24.
Edit: I hacked together a python script to download all images at resolution 14 https://gist.github.com/L1fescape/4761013
Now to figure out how to combine them all...
Looks like the format is:
http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Proxy.ashx?view=arundel_ms_263_<page_number>_files/<resolution_level>/<column>_<row>.jpg
At resolution 14, columns range from 0 to 33 and rows range from 0 to 24.
Edit: I hacked together a python script to download all images at resolution 14 https://gist.github.com/L1fescape/4761013
Now to figure out how to combine them all...
You might be able to combine the JPEGs in a lossless manner if they have neat dimensions:
http://wiki.thorx.net/wiki/JPEGhack
http://jpegclub.org/jpegtran/
http://wiki.thorx.net/wiki/JPEGhack
http://jpegclub.org/jpegtran/
Now to figure out how to combine them all...
ImageMagick's montage command will probably do it: http://konrad.strack.pl/blog/image-concatenation-with-imagem...
Also tiffcp and then tiff2pdf are how I've made pdfs of such image collections in the past.
ImageMagick's montage command will probably do it: http://konrad.strack.pl/blog/image-concatenation-with-imagem...
Also tiffcp and then tiff2pdf are how I've made pdfs of such image collections in the past.
Circumventing a technical rights protection measure?
Not legal under
> European Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the council of May 22, 2001
and probably the DMCA.
Not legal under
> European Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the council of May 22, 2001
and probably the DMCA.
It's not a technical rights protection measure, it's a standard bandwidth minimization measure used by sites like Gigapan and all slippy maps.
Has anyone asked for a download? If you did it nicely you might be pleasantly surprised.
Didn't Wikipedia decide similar terms were just scary legal BS and download all the high resolution images of public domain scans from another museum's website anyway?
http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/uk-national-portrait.html
http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/uk-national-portrait.html
Isn't that the internet anyways?
Here is the direct link to the manuscript: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Arundel_MS...
Did they really place a stamp of the British Museum on every page of this priceless historical artifact? I'm not being facetious, I was honestly surprised to see that.
It appears so, that red stamp appears to be different every time it appears.
The clueless idiot that got their stamp pad out that day is probably long retired or dead.
That big black stamp on page 2 doesn't look original either though, to be fair."ex dono" = as gift.
The clueless idiot that got their stamp pad out that day is probably long retired or dead.
That big black stamp on page 2 doesn't look original either though, to be fair."ex dono" = as gift.
painful example of 'might makes right' and reminder of violent thieving origins of our 'noble' rulers
This is amazing, a big thanks to that museum!!
He wrote latin and that too right to left (that was drm) if that helps anyone here. Of course, it's just easier to check out the commentary on than his actual work.
He wrote latin and that too right to left (that was drm) if that helps anyone here. Of course, it's just easier to check out the commentary on than his actual work.
I visited the Da Vinci museum in Florence, Italy, and Da Vinci was far ahead of his time, inventing the idea of the helicopter, bicycle, parachute, machine gun, scuba, and many others. A true genius. Oh, he also painted the Mona Lisa, probably the most famous painting of all time.
Anyone find any interesting pages? Page f.39v has a nice drawing of what appears to be a bug?
It'd be neat if you could reverse the pages so as to attempt to read what he'd written, even though it must be a fairly archaic form of Italian.
I really find it amazing how clean his writing is. It makes me wonder whether I shouldn't apply myself more often in my own notes...
Are there any annotated versions? With the translation overlayable, in-place? Perhaps on mouse-over?
So cool. It could be really fun way to learn to draw by attempting to sketch his figures.
:P