News up on the Archimedes Palimpsest , now being exhibited at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. [website] [previously]
posted by Twang on Oct 25, 2011 - 8 comments

In the 13th century, thrifty monastic scribes erased an old Archimedes manuscript they had lying around and reused it. Thankfully, they didn't do a very thorough job. Ten years ago today, an anonymous American collector purchased the Archimedes Palimpsest, and has since funded the project to conserve, image, and study the manuscript, which contains several otherwise unknown works. Today, the Archimedes Palimpsest Project has released all its data and images under a Creative Commons license.
posted by Horace Rumpole on Oct 29, 2008 - 22 comments

"That's why so many insights happen during warm showers."[pdf/html]
A print-only print-mostly article in last week's New Yorker magazine fascinatingly describes the neurological processes behind human insight, with nods to Henri Poincaré's omnibus eureka ("Having reached Coutances, we entered an omnibus to go some place or other. At the moment when I put my foot on the step the idea came to me, without anything in my former thoughts seeming to have paved the way for it") and Archimedes' bathtub eureka* ("Eureka!")
posted by jckll on Jul 30, 2008 - 33 comments

De Architectura, known also as The Ten Books of Architecture, is an exposition on architecture by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio. Originally in Latin, here it is translated into English.
posted by nthdegx on Nov 9, 2006 - 15 comments