Leonardo's Notebook Digitized in All Its Befuddling Glory

[nullc]

God forbid you want to save the data for personal archival or bulk digital analysis. If they allowed that you might defeat the museums careful control and curation of the data and potentially even use it in ways they don't agree with!

:P

[jaysonelliot]

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.

[Lifescape]

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:

  http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Proxy.ashx?view=arundel_ms_263_<page_number>_files/<resolution_level>/<column>_<row>.jpg

Pages work in this fashion: f001r, f001v, f002r, f002v, f003r, f003v, ... and ends at f283v.

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...

[unimpressive]

Has anyone asked for a download? If you did it nicely you might be pleasantly surprised.

[ZeroGravitas]

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

[namank]

Isn't that the internet anyways?

[sakopov]

Here is the direct link to the manuscript: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Arundel_MS...

[slavak]

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.

[bwooce]

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.

[ernestFlyweight]

painful example of 'might makes right' and reminder of violent thieving origins of our 'noble' rulers

[namank]

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.

[joshuaheard]

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.

[sheri]

Anyone find any interesting pages? Page f.39v has a nice drawing of what appears to be a bug?

[davidw]

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.

[rtpg]

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...

[willvarfar]

Are there any annotated versions? With the translation overlayable, in-place? Perhaps on mouse-over?

[leoh]

So cool. It could be really fun way to learn to draw by attempting to sketch his figures.