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I'm in Geek Ecstasy!

post #1 of 7
7/31/09 at 1:20pm
Thread Starter 
I just returned from a visit to the Linda Hall Library, a science and technology library located here in Kansas City (just a few hundred yards from where I work, actually). I'd been there hundreds of times, but never had the time to visit their rare book collection. Well, I did today, and the curator let me handle THREE first editions of the most famous books in the history of science: De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, Nicolai Copernicus (1543), Sidereus Nuncius, Galileo Galilei (1610), and Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton (1687). You might have to be a science geek to appreciate such a treat, but I'm still walking on air.

If you're ever in Kansas City (and it's unlikely that any Basenoter would, intentionally at least), I heartily recommend a visit to Linda Hall Library, the largest science library in the world that's open to the public. A link to their website is below.

http://www.lindahall.org/events_exhib/index.shtml
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post #2 of 7
7/31/09 at 3:54pm
You, sir, are getting in touch with some of the source material!
Well done, I'm sure it was an incredible experience.
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post #3 of 7
7/31/09 at 3:56pm
Oooh, the Principia.....sounds so sexy! Really!
But then, I love old books, especially when they have things to say, such as these.

I have some reprinted texts of very old "science" books. There was such an interrelation between culture, science and religion that is not present in modern works. It is so interesting to see INTEGRATED ideas rather than ones that are never overtly related to our daily lives.
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post #4 of 7
7/31/09 at 4:16pm
My comparable experience was being at the British Museum in London, and the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, and seeing some of the oldest Biblical manuscripts extant. Couldn't touch them because they are under glass. But I could look at them closely, relics from the 4th century and even a bit earlier. Wow!
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post #5 of 7
7/31/09 at 7:16pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by odysseusm View Post

My comparable experience was being at the British Museum in London, and the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, and seeing some of the oldest Biblical manuscripts extant. Couldn't touch them because they are under glass. But I could look at them closely, relics from the 4th century and even a bit earlier. Wow!

Yes, it was much like that for me too. I'm sure it sounds trite, but viewing important artifacts from the past really makes history come alive.
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post #6 of 7
8/1/09 at 5:10am
That is truly fascinating.
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post #7 of 7
8/1/09 at 7:10pm
What an incredible experience! I would be as awed by those books as I would be by viewing a Rembrandt.

One neat literary gem I had the opportunity to view is the manuscript for Jack Kerouac's On the Road. It was on display a few years ago at the San Francisco Public Library. It is one very long, continuous, typed scroll, and about the first 30 feet were unrolled for viewing.
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