Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Robot Scans Ancient Manuscript in 3-D

After a thousand years stuck on a dusty library shelf, the oldest copy of Homer's Iliad is about to go into digital circulation. A team of scholars traveled to a medieval library in Venice to create an ultra-precise 3-D copy of the ancient manuscript -- complete with every wrinkle, rip and imperfection -- using a laser scanner mounted on a robot arm. A high-resolution, 3-D copy of the entire 645-page parchment book, plus a searchable transcription, will be made available online under a Creative Commons license.

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Thanks to Shaun Saunders for post

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

One day, will this be done for, say, the oldest surviving copy of 20 000 leagues, or war of the worlds??? or Foundation???

Anonymous said...

You know, you have hit on something that gives me pause and concern. Oh this is a great undertaking, no doubt. Ummm but now who decides what is to be considered "scannable" material? hummmm

Anonymous said...

You might consider my short story 'The last Book'... (from the anthology you recently gave a pre-publication review)