How the World’s Biggest Dome Was Built: The Story of Filippo Brunelleschi and the Duomo in Florence

Even if Flo­rence did­n’t rep­re­sent the absolute pin­na­cle of human civ­i­liza­tion at the end of the thir­teenth cen­tu­ry, it had to have been a strong con­tender for the posi­tion. What the city lacked, how­ev­er, was a cathe­dral befit­ting its sta­tus. Hence the con­struc­tion, which com­menced in 1296, of just such a holy struc­ture, in accor­dance with ambi­tious plans drawn up by archi­tect Arnol­fo di Cam­bio. But when di Cam­bio died in 1302, work came more or less to a stop for near­ly half a cen­tu­ry. Con­struc­tion resumed in 1344 under Giot­to, whose own death three years lat­er left the project to his assis­tant Andrea Pisano, who was him­self suc­ceed­ed by Francesco Tal­en­ti, Gio­van­ni di Lapo Ghi­ni, Alber­to Arnol­di, Gio­van­ni d’Am­bro­gio, Neri di Fio­ra­van­ti, and Andrea Orcagna.

None of these archi­tects, how­ev­er astute, man­aged to fin­ish the cathe­dral: in 1418, it still had a gap­ing hole on top where its dome should have been, and in any case no viable design or engi­neer­ing pro­ce­dure to con­struct one. “So they had a com­pe­ti­tion, and every­body was invit­ed to sub­mit their projects,” says Youtu­ber Manuel Bra­vo, who tells the sto­ry in the video at the top of the post.

Enter the sculp­tor Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi, who declared, in effect, “I can do it. I can build you the dome. And what’s more, I can build you the dome with­out coins or earth.” That last was a ref­er­ence to an ear­li­er archi­tec­t’s sug­ges­tion that the dome under con­struc­tion be sup­port­ed with a mound of dirt filled with mon­ey, so peas­ants would glad­ly vol­un­teer to cart it away after com­ple­tion.

Brunelleschi’s con­sid­er­ably more ele­gant idea was inspired by the ruins of antiq­ui­ty, not least the Pan­theon, which then boast­ed the largest dome ever built in Europe, dis­cussed by Bra­vo in a pre­vi­ous video. In this one he breaks down the inge­nious tech­niques Brunelleschi used to out­do the Pan­theon, and with­out using a tem­po­rary sup­port­ing struc­ture of any kind. Instead, he incor­po­rat­ed ring-like ele­ments “tying the dome from out­side, as if they were belts like the ones we wear,” as well as “a par­tic­u­lar kind of brick­work, a pat­tern with a series of spi­ral ribs” which “allowed them to lock togeth­er the bricks that were placed hor­i­zon­tal­ly.” The result, a struc­ture “com­plete­ly self-brac­ing in all its phas­es of con­struc­tion,” has stood firm­ly since 1469 as, quite lit­er­al­ly, a crown­ing glo­ry: not just of the Duo­mo, but of Flo­rence as well.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi, Untrained in Archi­tec­ture or Engi­neer­ing, Built the World’s Largest Dome at the Dawn of the Renais­sance

How to Build Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inge­nious Self-Sup­port­ing Bridge: Renais­sance Inno­va­tions You Can Still Enjoy Today

The Life & Times of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Geo­des­ic Dome: A Doc­u­men­tary

The Beau­ty & Inge­nu­ity of the Pan­theon, Ancient Rome’s Best-Pre­served Mon­u­ment: An Intro­duc­tion

The His­to­ry of West­ern Archi­tec­ture: A Free Course Mov­ing from Ancient Greece to Roco­co

Free Course: An Intro­duc­tion to the Art of the Ital­ian Renais­sance

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Why Georges Seurat’s Pointillist Painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte Is a Masterpiece

Every­one knows that Georges Seu­rat’s Un dimanche après-midi à l’Île de la Grande Jat­te, or A Sun­day After­noon on the Island of La Grande Jat­te, resides at the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go. Or at least every­one who’s seen Fer­ris Bueller’s Day Off knows it. The Art Insti­tute appears as just one of the implau­si­bly var­ied attrac­tions of Chica­go enjoyed by that film’s tit­u­lar hooky-play­ing high-school senior and his friends — even the anx­i­ety-rid­den Cameron, drops from a moment out of his trou­bled life while trans­fixed by Seu­rat’s most famous paint­ing. The clos­er he looks, the less dis­cernible its gen­teel Parisian fig­ures become, dis­solv­ing into fields of col­ored dots.

“George Seu­rat spent most of his adult life think­ing about col­or,” says gal­lerist-Youtu­ber James Payne, “study­ing the­o­ries and work­ing out sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly how one col­or, placed in a series of dots next to those of anoth­er, cre­ates a whole dif­fer­ent col­or when it hits the reti­na of the human eye.”

By the time of La Grande Jat­te — which he metic­u­lous­ly planned, labo­ri­ous­ly exe­cut­ed, and com­plet­ed between 1884 and 1886 — “he made sure we saw col­or exact­ly how he want­ed us to.” Payne tells the sto­ry of Seu­rat, his sci­en­tif­ic, aes­thet­ic, and philo­soph­i­cal inter­ests, and the fruits of his intel­lec­tu­al and artis­tic labors, in the new video from his chan­nel Great Art Explained at the top of the post.

Seu­rat first paint­ed La Grande Jat­te using not dots but dash­es, “ver­ti­cal for trees and hor­i­zon­tal for the water.” After fur­ther devel­op­ing his col­or the­o­ry, he returned to the can­vas and “added hun­dreds of thou­sands of small dots of com­pli­men­ta­ry col­ors on top of what he’d already done, which appear as sol­id and lumi­nous forms when seen from a dis­tance.” The final stage involved the addi­tion of a col­ored bor­der around the entire scene, and not long there­after elab­o­rate inter­pre­ta­tions of the out­ward­ly placid paint­ing began to mul­ti­ply. But “the lack of nar­ra­tive means we real­ly should look to the artist’s obses­sion with form, tech­nique, and the­o­ry, which is prac­ti­cal­ly all he wrote about, and not the mean­ing or sub­ject man­ner.” We may enjoy talk­ing about art’s con­tent, but it is art’s form, after all, that tru­ly cap­ti­vates us.

Relat­ed con­tent:

2,000+ Impres­sion­ist, Post-impres­sion­ist & Ear­ly Mod­ern Paint­ings Now Free Online, Thanks to the Barnes Foun­da­tion

Vin­cent Van Gogh’s The Star­ry Night: Why It’s a Great Paint­ing in 15 Min­utes

Monet’s Water Lilies: How World War

The Scream Explained: What’s Real­ly Hap­pen­ing in Edvard Munch’s World-Famous Paint­ing

The Maligned Impres­sion­ist Painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir Illus­trates Emile Zola’s Grit­ty Nov­el L’Assommoir (1878)

An Intro­duc­tion to 100 Impor­tant Paint­ings with Videos Cre­at­ed by Smarthis­to­ry

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

How 99% of Ancient Literature Was Lost

Ancient Greece and Rome had plen­ty of lit­er­a­ture, but prac­ti­cal­ly none of it sur­vives today. What exact­ly became of almost every­thing writ­ten down in West­ern antiq­ui­ty is the sub­ject of the video above by ancient-his­to­ry Youtube chan­nel Told in Stone, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for its inves­ti­ga­tions into every­thing from the Colos­se­um and the Pan­theon to Roman nightlife and the explo­sion of Mount Vesu­vius. But none of its past videos has quite as much rel­e­vance to this par­tic­u­lar sto­ry as the one on the burn­ing of the Library of Alexan­dria.

Described by nar­ra­tor Gar­ret Ryan as “the great­est of all ancient libraries,” the Library of Alexan­dria could have con­tained between 532,800 and 700,000 vol­umes in scroll form, all of them lost by the time Julius Cae­sar burned it down in 48 B.C..

Even so, “the loss of all but a tiny frac­tion of ancient lit­er­a­ture was not brought about by the dis­ap­pear­ance of a sin­gle library. It was, instead, the con­se­quence of the basic fragili­ty of texts before the advent of print­ing.” Papyrus, the pre-paper writ­ing mate­r­i­al first devel­oped in ancient Egypt, cer­tain­ly could­n’t stand the test of time: in rel­a­tive­ly humid west­ern Europe, “most papyri had to be recopied every cen­tu­ry or so.”

Plus ça change: even, and per­haps espe­cial­ly, in our dig­i­tal era, long-term data archival has turned out to neces­si­tate reg­u­lar move­ment from one stor­age medi­um to the next. But per­haps our civ­i­liza­tion will prove luck­i­er with the process than the Roman Empire, whose col­lapse meant that “the elites who had tra­di­tion­al­ly com­mis­sioned new copies all but van­ished. Far few­er man­u­scripts were pro­duced, and those that were tend­ed to serve the par­tic­u­lar pur­pos­es of reli­gion, edu­ca­tion, and the tech­ni­cal dis­ci­plines.” For these and oth­er rea­sons, very few clas­sics made it to the Mid­dle Ages, and thus to the Renais­sance. But even if you don’t have much to study, so the lat­ter era glo­ri­ous­ly demon­strat­ed, you can more than com­pen­sate by study­ing it hard.

Relat­ed con­tent:

What Was Actu­al­ly Lost When the Library of Alexan­dria Burned?

How Egypt­ian Papyrus Is Made: Watch Arti­sans Keep a 5,000-Year-Old Art Alive

The Rise and Fall of the Great Library of Alexan­dria: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

The Turin Erot­ic Papyrus: The Old­est Known Depic­tion of Human Sex­u­al­i­ty (Cir­ca 1150 B.C.E.)

How Ancient Scrolls, Charred by the Erup­tion of Mount Vesu­vius in 79 AD, Are Now Being Read by Par­ti­cle Accel­er­a­tors, 3D Mod­el­ing & Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

An Architect Breaks Down the Design of New York City Subway Stations, from the Oldest to Newest

With 26 lines and 472 sta­tions, the New York City sub­way sys­tem is prac­ti­cal­ly a liv­ing organ­ism, and way too big a top­ic to tack­le in a short video.

Archi­tect Michael Wyet­zn­er may not have time to touch on rats, crime track fires, flood­ing, night and week­end ser­vice dis­rup­tions, or the adults-in-a-Peanuts-spe­cial sound qual­i­ty of the announce­ments in the above episode of Archi­tec­tur­al Digest’s Blue­prints web series, but he gives an excel­lent overview of its evolv­ing design, from the sta­tions them­selves to side­walk entrances to the plat­form sig­nage.

First stop, the old City Hall sta­tion, whose chan­de­liers, sky­lights, and Guas­tavi­no tile arch­ing in an alter­nat­ing col­ors her­ring­bone pat­tern made it the star attrac­tion of the just-opened sys­tem in 1904.

(It’s been closed since 1945, but savvy tran­sit buffs know that they can catch a glimpse by ignor­ing the conductor’s announce­ment to exit the down­town 6 train at its last stop, then look­ing out the win­dow as it makes a U‑turn, pass­ing through the aban­doned sta­tion to begin its trip back uptown. The New York Tran­sit Muse­um also hosts pop­u­lar thrice year­ly tours.)

Express tracks have been a fea­ture of New York’s sub­way sys­tem since the begin­ning, when Inter­bor­ough Rapid Tran­sit Com­pa­ny enhanced its exist­ing ele­vat­ed line with an under­ground route capa­ble of car­ry­ing pas­sen­gers from City Hall to Harlem for a nick­el fare.

Wyet­zn­er effi­cient­ly sketch­es the open exca­va­tion design of the ear­ly IRT sta­tions — “cut and cov­er” trench­es less than 20’ deep, with room for four tracks, plat­forms, and no frills sup­port columns that are near­ly as ubiq­ui­tous white sub­way tiles.

For the most part, New York­ers take the sub­way for grant­ed, and are always pre­pared to beef about the fare to ser­vice ration, but this was not the case on New Year’s Day, 2017, when rid­ers went out of their way to take the Q train.

Fol­low­ing years of delays, aggra­vat­ing con­struc­tion noise and traf­fic con­ges­tion, every­one want­ed to be among the first to inspect Phase 1 of the Sec­ond Avenue Sub­way project, which extend­ed the line by three impres­sive­ly mod­ern, airy col­umn-free sta­tions.

(The mas­sive drills used to cre­ate tun­nels and sta­tions at a far greater depth than the IRT line, were left where they wound up, in prepa­ra­tion for Phase 2, which is slat­ed to push the line up to 125th St by 2029. (Don’t hold your breath…)

The design­ers of the sub­way placed a pre­mi­um on aes­thet­ics, as evi­denced by the domed Art Nou­veau IRT entrance kiosks and beau­ti­ful per­ma­nent plat­form signs.

From the orig­i­nal mosaics to Beaux Arts bas relief plaques like the ones pay­ing trib­ute to the for­tune John Jacob Astor amassed in the fur trade, there’s lots of his­to­ry hid­ing in plain sight.

The mid-80s ini­tia­tive to bring pub­lic art under­ground has filled sta­tions and pas­sage­ways with work by some mar­quee names, like Vik Muniz, Chuck Close, William Weg­man, Nick Cave, Tom Otter­ness, Roy Licht­en­stein and Yoko Ono.

Wyet­zn­er also name checks graph­ic design­er Mas­si­mo Vignel­li who was brought aboard in 1966 to stan­dard­ize the infor­ma­tion­al sig­nage.

The white-on-black sans serif font direct­ing us to our desired con­nec­tions and exits now seems like part of the subway’s DNA.

Per­haps 21st-cen­tu­ry inno­va­tions like count­down clocks and dig­i­tal screens list­ing real-time ser­vice changes and alter­na­tive routes will too, one of these days.

If Wyet­zn­er is open to film­ing the fol­low-up view­ers are clam­or­ing for in the com­ments, per­haps he’ll weigh in on the new A‑train cars that debuted last week, which boast secu­ri­ty cam­eras, flip-up seat­ing to accom­mo­date rid­ers with dis­abil­i­ties, and wider door open­ings to pro­mote quick­er board­ing.

(Yes, they’re still the quick­est way to get to Harlem…)

Relat­ed Con­tent 

A Sub­way Ride Through New York City: Watch Vin­tage Footage from 1905

How the Icon­ic Col­ors of the New York City Sub­way Sys­tem Were Invent­ed: See the 1930 Col­or Chart Cre­at­ed by Archi­tect Squire J. Vick­ers

Design­er Mas­si­mo Vignel­li Revis­its and Defends His Icon­ic 1972 New York City Sub­way Map

The Sound of Sub­ways Around the World: A Glob­al Col­lec­tion of Sub­way Door Clos­ing Announce­ments, Beeps & Chimes

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The Dos & Don’ts of Driving to West Berlin During the Cold War: A Weird Piece of Ephemera from the 1980s

As gen­er­a­tions have come of age with few or no mem­o­ries of the exis­tence of the Sovi­et Union, a com­mon mis­con­cep­tion about Berlin has become more com­mon. Because the Ger­man cap­i­tal was divid­ed between the for­mer East and West Ger­many, it’s easy to assume that it must have lay on the bor­der between the two states. In fact, the whole of Berlin, East and West, was com­plete­ly sur­round­ed by East Ger­many, and to dri­ve from West Ger­many to West Berlin entailed more than 100 miles on the auto­bahn through Sovi­et ter­ri­to­ry. How, exact­ly, this was done is ful­ly explained in “Des­ti­na­tion Berlin,” the 1988 video from the Roy­al Mil­i­tary Police above.

“You do not need to wor­ry about the trip,” says the north­ern-accent­ed nar­ra­tor, an announce­ment that  rather under­cuts it own intend­ed mes­sage. And few dri­vers, affil­i­at­ed with the British mil­i­tary or oth­er­wise, could watch the mate­r­i­al that fol­lows with­out spec­u­lat­ing on the host of false moves that could result in an invol­un­tary extend­ed stay on the wrong side of the Iron Cur­tain.

You must nev­er pull off at a rest stop. If you break down on the high­way, you must accept assis­tance only from Allied dri­vers. When salut­ed by any of the Sovi­et offi­cers inevitably encoun­tered along the jour­ney, “you must, irre­spec­tive of your sex, sta­tus, or form of dress, return his salute.”

“Should you be spo­ken to by a Sovi­et or East Ger­man nation­al,” the nar­ra­tor explains, “you must do the fol­low­ing: remem­ber as much detail about the con­ver­sa­tion as you can, as well as the phys­i­cal descrip­tion, dress, and rank of the indi­vid­ual. Remain non-com­mit­tal through­out, and do not agree to any­thing.” (And remem­ber, “you only attract atten­tion to your­self by speak­ing in Russ­ian to the Sovi­et check­point per­son­nel, so don’t do it.”) These stern warn­ings evoke the Cold War era as pow­er­ful­ly as the audio­vi­su­al pro­duc­tion of “Des­ti­na­tion Berlin” itself, even in the minds of those who did­n’t live through it. Could any­one watch­ing back in 1988 — anx­ious about just which doc­u­ments to present at which guard sta­tions, to say noth­ing of the poten­tial geopo­lit­i­cal con­se­quences of a fend­er-ben­der — have imag­ined that the Berlin Wall would fall the very next year?

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

Louis Arm­strong Plays His­toric Cold War Con­certs in East Berlin & Budapest (1965)

Pro­tect and Sur­vive: 1970s British Instruc­tion­al Films on How to Live Through a Nuclear Attack

Bruce Spring­steen Plays East Berlin in 1988: I’m Not Here For Any Gov­ern­ment. I’ve Come to Play Rock

The East Ger­man Secret Police’s Illus­trat­ed Guide for Iden­ti­fy­ing Youth Sub­cul­tures: Punks, Goths, Teds & More (1985)

The Psy­che­del­ic Ani­mat­ed Video for Kraftwerk’s “Auto­bahn” from 1979

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Military Adventures of Alexander the Great: An Animated Documentary Shows How He Conquered Most of the Known World (336–323 BC)

To learn about his­to­ry is to learn about war, or so it can feel when you go far back enough in time. And in any era of antiq­ui­ty, few could have matched Alexan­der the Great’s mas­tery of that art. After becom­ing kind of the Mace­don in 336 BC, at the age of 20, he spent a decade con­quer­ing oth­er lands in order to build a vast empire stretch­ing from Greece to India. How he man­aged to pull it off is the sub­ject of the near­ly hour-long Epic His­to­ry TV video above, which traces Alexan­der’s life and reign over ever-vaster swathes of the then-known world.

Re-cre­at­ing all the bat­tles of Alexan­der’s con­quest with not just maps but 3D ani­ma­tion as well, the pro­duc­tion makes clear­ly leg­i­ble the kind of vio­lent con­flicts that, no doubt chaot­ic when expe­ri­enced on the bat­tle­field, can also be dif­fi­cult to fol­low in the pages of a text­book.

Its graph­ics and nar­ra­tion break down every­thing from how Alexan­der ini­tial­ly arranged his troops to how he respond­ed, blow by blow, to the moves of ene­my forces. All of it added up to a mil­i­tary strat­e­gy that kept Alexan­der unde­feat­ed in bat­tle despite often hav­ing been out­num­bered, and whose details are still stud­ied today.

By his mid-twen­ties, Alexan­der had con­quered the once-mighty Per­sian Empire. But with the ambi­tion befit­ting a vic­to­ri­ous young man — not to men­tion one who’d been tutored by Aris­to­tle him­self — he would set­tle for noth­ing less than rul­ing the world, or at least the world as a Greek in the fourth cen­tu­ry BC would have con­ceived of it, and he man­aged to get quite close to that goal before his death at the age of 32. That he was felled by an ill­ness rather than in war is one of his­to­ry’s great ironies, giv­en that he’d per­son­al­ly led his troops into all their bat­tles. As for the fact that we remem­ber Alexan­der’s name well over two mil­len­nia after his death, it’s safe to say that it would­n’t sur­prise him.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Ancient Greece in 18 Min­utes: A Brisk Primer Nar­rat­ed by Bri­an Cox

The Rise and Fall of the Great Library of Alexan­dria: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

The His­to­ry of the Byzan­tine Empire (or East Roman Empire): An Ani­mat­ed Time­line Cov­er­ing 1,100 Years of His­to­ry

How Ara­bic Trans­la­tors Helped Pre­serve Greek Phi­los­o­phy … and the Clas­si­cal Tra­di­tion

Sun Tzu’s The Art of War: An Ani­mat­ed Chap­ter-by-Chap­ter Break­down of the Ancient Chi­nese Trea­tise

Learn Ancient Greek in 64 Free Lessons: A Free Online Course from Bran­deis & Har­vard

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

When a UFO Came to Japan in 1803: Discover the Legend of Utsuro-bune

For the enthu­si­ast of uniden­ti­fied fly­ing objects, we live in inter­est­ing times indeed. Back in 2021, as we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, the CIA declas­si­fied and pub­lished thou­sands of pages of UFO-relat­ed doc­u­ments. In just the past few weeks, three UFOs were shot down over North Amer­i­ca. In the span of time between those events, much else has also occurred to stim­u­late the imag­i­na­tion of those who’ve kept watch­ing the skies. Fas­ci­na­tion with UFOs may have strong cul­tur­al asso­ci­a­tions with twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca — and the sub­ject can now feel a bit passé for that rea­son — but it knows few­er cul­tur­al or tem­po­ral bound­aries than we may think: wit­ness, for exam­ple, the Japan­ese folk­tale of Utsuro-bune.

“In 1803, a round ves­sel drift­ed ashore on the Japan­ese coast and a beau­ti­ful woman emerged, wear­ing strange cloth­ing and car­ry­ing a box. She was unable to com­mu­ni­cate with the locals, and her craft was marked with mys­te­ri­ous writ­ing.” Such is the premise of the leg­end as retold at Nippon.com, which also offers an analy­sis by Gifu Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus Tana­ka Kazuo.

“Long before the Amer­i­can UFO sto­ries, the craft depict­ed in Edo-peri­od Japan­ese doc­u­ments for some rea­son looked like a fly­ing saucer,” he says. Nor have schol­ars traced Utsuro-bune (虚舟, which means “hol­low ship”) back to only one source: to date, Tana­ka “has found eleven doc­u­ments relat­ing to the Hitachi Utsuro-bune leg­end, of which the most inter­est­ing are thought to date from 1803, the same year that the craft was said to have come to shore.”

What exact­ly hap­pened in Hitachi, a small city on Japan’s east coast, in 1803? Why do near con­tem­po­rary depic­tions of the Utsuro-bune itself (espe­cial­ly in the 1835 Hyōryū kishū or “records of cast­aways,” as seen at the top of the post) so close­ly resem­ble mod­ern-day visions of fly­ing saucers? Giv­en that the inci­dent is held to have tak­en place dur­ing the coun­try’s 265-year-long sakoku peri­od of nation­al iso­la­tion, no for­eign­er is like­ly to have crossed over to Japan­ese shores with­out caus­ing a major inci­dent. Unable to com­mu­ni­cate with this mys­te­ri­ous woman, the fish­er­men of Hitachi are said sim­ply to have returned her — box and all — to the hol­low ship, which drift­ed back out to sea, nev­er to be seen again. It was her good luck, some ufol­o­gists might say, to have turned up on Earth a cen­tu­ry and a half before the open­ing of Area 51.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Japan­ese Fairy Tale Series: The Illus­trat­ed Books That Intro­duced West­ern Read­ers to Japan­ese Tales (1885–1922)

The First Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed to Japan­ese Folk­lore Mon­sters Is Now Open

The Ghosts and Mon­sters of Hoku­sai: See the Famed Wood­block Artist’s Fear­some & Amus­ing Visions of Strange Appari­tions

The CIA Has Declas­si­fied 2,780 Pages of UFO-Relat­ed Doc­u­ments, and They’re Now Free to Down­load

What Do Aliens Look Like? Oxford Astro­bi­ol­o­gists Draw a Pic­ture, Based on Dar­win­ian The­o­ries of Evo­lu­tion

The Appeal of UFO Nar­ra­tives: Inves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ist Paul Beban Vis­its Pret­ty Much Pop #14

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Leonardo’s Lost Sketches Suggest That He Theorized Gravity Before Galileo & Newton

It would be clichéd to describe Leonar­do da Vin­ci as a man ahead of his time. But in the case of the quin­tes­sen­tial Renais­sance poly­math, it may well be one of those clichés firm­ly root­ed in truth. In fact, that root­ing has just grown even firmer with the dis­cov­ery of a tri­an­gle that Leonar­do sketched in one of his note­books, the Codex Arun­del (cir­ca 1478–1518). That tri­an­gle, as the New York Times’ William J. Broad writes, had “an adjoin­ing pitch­er and, pour­ing from its spout, a series of cir­cles that formed the triangle’s hypotenuse.” This image sounds sim­ple, but it reveals that Leonar­do approached an under­stand­ing of the laws of grav­i­ty before Galileo, and well before New­ton.

This find­ing is the work of Morteza Gharib, a pro­fes­sor of aero­nau­tics at the Cal­i­for­nia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy. Cap­ti­vat­ed by this sketch, he “used a com­put­er pro­gram to flip the tri­an­gle and the adja­cent areas of back­ward writ­ing,” which clar­i­fied what Leonar­do was attempt­ing to do.

His dia­gram turned out “to split the effects of grav­i­ty into two parts that revealed an aspect of nature nor­mal­ly kept hid­den.” The first part was grav­i­ty’s “nat­ur­al down­ward pull”; the sec­ond was the move­ment of the pitch­er itself along a line. That Leonar­do drew “the pitcher’s con­tents falling low­er and low­er over time” implies his under­stand­ing that “grav­i­ty was a con­stant force that result­ed in a steady accel­er­a­tion.”

Along with co-authors Chris Roh and Flavio Noca, Gharib has pub­lished a paper on “Leonar­do da Vinci’s Visu­al­iza­tion of Grav­i­ty as a Form of Accel­er­a­tion” in this mon­th’s issue of Leonar­do — an appro­pri­ate­ly named jour­nal in this case, though one ded­i­cat­ed less to the study of Leonar­do the man than to the study of the inter­sec­tion of art and sci­ence he occu­pied. As Gharib and oth­ers see it, Leonar­do “was far more than an artist and sug­gest­ed that his fame as a pio­neer­ing sci­en­tist could sky­rock­et if more tech­ni­cal­ly knowl­edge­able experts probed the Codex Arun­del and oth­er sources” — the kind of experts who can tell that, with his pitch­er and tri­an­gle, Leonar­do man­aged to deter­mine the strength of gravity’s pull to an accu­ra­cy of about 97 per­cent. Which leads us to won­der: What else about the nature of real­i­ty must he have worked out in the mar­gins of his note­books?

via Art­net

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Vision­ary Note­books Now Online: Browse 570 Dig­i­tized Pages

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Ele­gant Design for a Per­pet­u­al Motion Machine

How Leonar­do da Vin­ci Made His Mag­nif­i­cent Draw­ings Using Only a Met­al Sty­lus, Pen & Ink, and Chalk

Down­load the Sub­lime Anato­my Draw­ings of Leonar­do da Vin­ci: Avail­able Online, or in a Great iPad App

A Com­plete Dig­i­ti­za­tion of Leonar­do Da Vinci’s Codex Atlanti­cus, the Largest Exist­ing Col­lec­tion of His Draw­ings & Writ­ings

The Old­est Known Globe to Depict the New World Was Engraved on an Ostrich Egg, Maybe by Leonar­do da Vin­ci (1504)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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