Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Codex Atlanticus” Now Online | Hacker News Reader

Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Codex Atlanticus” Now Online

mymodernmet.com

184 pointspseudolus44 comments

UPDATE: Threw together some simple HTML/JS for simple interaction: https://toogoodtogo-alerter.com/static/davinci.html (no analytics)

The images you linked seem easily accessible through the website.

Yes it is. But the page is bloated with heavy JS and design elements, making it hard to view the content on their page. They also serve you with a low-resolution version of the images.

That's true. I too would prefer a leaner page that would just let us navigate the full size images.

Check my update. Made such a page now ;)

> UPDATE: Threw together some simple HTML/JS for simple interaction: https://toogoodtogo-alerter.com/static/davinci.html (no analytics)

Nice. I like the barebones and fast interface. But so far, this only includes the recto of each folio, not the verso. It would be nice if there was a way to see both. (e.g. see 527v: http://codex-atlanticus.it/assets//2000/000V-527.jpg, which is far more interesting than 527r)

Included a switch now. If you have some idea on a simpler interaction let med know.

It’s a frequent issue with Italian and French sites.

Why single out those, it's a frequent issue with all sites.

Bias based on where I live. In my case most Swiss sites are rather good, every time I have to use French sites I struggle.

UPDATE Nr2:

-All images to browse on Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/kf39feyjhqub1rq/AABsKUe3YB7Jxo4ub...

-One big ZIP: https://www.dropbox.com/s/82alw5mex6zqz6f/davinci-img.zip?dl... (1,1GB before+after zip)

Thanks to opsecisameme for the wget trick

I turned the .zip into a .PDF based on a simple alphabetical sort on the filenames.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/35xdelkimqc1k4i/codex_atlanticus.p...

My guess is that the page ordering is pretty far out of whack, but at least it's browsable and easily-archived now.

If only there was some kind of portable document format suitable for paged documents.

I really like your simple version to browse the manuscript and I agree it should be available at codex-atlanticus.it, but removing the design and interaction you loose a lot of information. Maybe to you this information is useless, but to a lot of others it is not.

This edition has some nice, creative solutions to hard information presentation problems.

Link to the actual Codex Atlanticus itself:

http://www.codex-atlanticus.it/#/ (scroll to bottom right for link to English language version of site)

Some of these are awesome, cool enough to put up on my wall on canvas or so. But for that something a bit more high-res than 2000x2000 would be nice. Does anyone know of a higher res version?

Resized some to 2x with great results: https://waifu2x.booru.pics/

Cool fact. All of this writing is in mirror image reverse writing so that no one in contemporary times could read his notebooks.

He taught himself how to write in mirror image.

This always baffles me. It's significantly less secure than rot13 (similar in its idempotence) and it seems to me that any curious mind would identify the letter shapes, notice that they're backwards, and soon work it out. Was this actually a mystery, or was it merely a foil that would prevent comprehension if somebody only got a glimpse?

I suspect the latter, but most people take a while to puzzle it out. I got good at reading upside down for some reason, and the skill still rewards me on occasion.

When I was in high school, I taught myself to write mirrored, and tortured (which, in retrospect, was kinda flirting with...) an english teacher. The teacher was annoyed/impressed/tolerant, and their approach was to read my papers in the bathroom with the mirror. They were dismayed when I simply held the paper up to the ceiling light.

To this day, I'm occasionally confounded by doors that have "HSUP" written on clear glass -- it's actually a "PULL" but I read the "PUSH" and smack. Other than that, I'm happy to have the skill. :P

Based on the biography I'm currently reading, he didn't do this to secure his notes which would make sense considering how smart he was in every other way.

It's because he was left handed and wanted to write right to left.

It’s beautifully organized, but I want to ask about why they say it’s ”now” online? Weren’t these available online before (in a less organized way or in lower res)? If not, why not? Was someone preventing copyright-free material from being published?

These were not available in their entirety online before.

That is because the only copy was held by the Ambrosian Library, and presumably they have had other priorities than digitizing those 1200 pages.

A while back I read a text by DaVinci describing the process of drawing (if I can find it I will add a link) and his description seemed to me almost like he was describing how a ray tracer works.

This 3D sketch of his makes me think that if computers had existed, he could easily have been the first to have coded a ray tracer:

http://codex-atlanticus.it/assets//2000/000R-710.jpg

Looks like the app was built with Vue.js. [1]

The design is very "consultant"-y, which means over-engineered and focusing on what looks "cool" over web usability. But looking at the website I believe it was mean't to be deployed via touchscreen kiosks at the actual library/museum. So the form factor makes more sense for that than consumption via web browsers and search engines.

The keyboard controls are less than to be desired, you can't zoom in and go to the next page without it reverting to the previous view and doing a big transition. Which is not how most document viewers or image galleries work...

[1] http://www.codex-atlanticus.it/#/Overview

Is there a torrent or something so that I can look at this in a reasonable format?

If you consider a bunch of JPGs reasonable, just

  wget http://codex-atlanticus.it/assets//1000/000{V,R}-{1..1118}.jpg

Thank you for this!

    wget http://codex-atlanticus.it/assets//2000/000{V,R}-{1..1118}.jpg

for 2k x 2k res

I'm grabbing all of these, if people are interested I can make a torrent so we don't slam their servers too much.

Too late, already slamming but thanks for the command! Looking at those images from the web UI is not the best experience.

Yes, this is a huge example of over-engineering.

please do

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:D69E07DD344D26ED13396141F6EA77A1DFC2348C&dn=codex-atlanticus.it

Ahahah thanks for this, I fell asleep before I had a chance to set up a torrent, great to see someone beat me to the punch. I'll be seeding this shortly.

missing 527 verso, for example.

Read this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19947001

000V-527.jpg and 000R-527.jpg are included. Is there a third file?

Got a directory via IPFS up and running: /ipfs/QmSefyAobiVzVEkD9ovXRcWRJgcgGWE2hbnVNEu3LAL4Gj

You can see it via a HTTP Gateway (such as ipfs.io) like this: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmSefyAobiVzVEkD9ovXRcWRJgcgGWE2hbnVNEu...

Download locally with: `ipfs get -o codex-atlanticus QmSefyAobiVzVEkD9ovXRcWRJgcgGWE2hbnVNEu3LAL4Gj` and you'll end up with the entire archive in a `codex-atlanticus` directory

Anyone found a high-quality printed edition of these? I only found a couple fragmented versions with questionable quality.

Yes. Go to http://www.leonardodigitale.com/index.php?lang=ENG. Flash must be enabled. Click on "Browse", choose "Codex Atlanticus" (not the Hoepli edition). Then for every page you read, it displays the text (in Italian) from that page in the other "window".

Screenshots in action: https://i.imgur.com/HLhnEKQ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/gH81s52.jpg

Thank you, although I'm looking for a high-quality printed reproduction/book, not digital.

Oh, I thought you meant "printed" as opposed to "handwritten" or "cursive". Oops.

I dream of making something to this effect; A notebook full of your life's deepest works. I'm sure many others feel the same way too.

I wish I could make more time.

I really want there to be a couple pages with cat paw prints in ink walking across the pages.

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