9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The great texts of the ancient world 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 don't survive to us in their original form. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 They survive because Medieval scribes copied them 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and copied them and copied them. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And so it is which Archimedes, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the great Greek mathematician. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Everything we know about Archimedes as a mathematician 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 we know about because of just three books, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and they're called A, B and C. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And A was lost by an Italian humanist in 1564. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And B was last heard of in the Pope's Library 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 about a hundred miles north of Rome in [unclear] in 1311. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Now Codex C was only discovered in 1906, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and it landed on my desk in Baltimore 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 on the 19th of January, 1999. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And this is Codex C here. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Now Codex C is actually buried in this book. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It's buried treasure. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Because this book is actually a prayer book. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It was finished by a guy called Johannes Myrones 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 on the 14th of April, 2029. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And to make his prayer book he used parchment. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But he didn't use new parchment, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 he used parchment recycled from earlier manuscripts, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and there were seven of them. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And Archimedes Codex C was just one of those seven. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 He took apart the Archimedes manuscript and the other seven manuscripts. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 He erased all of their texts, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and then he cut the sheets down in the middle, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 he shuffled them up, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and he rotated them 90 degrees, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and he wrote prayers on top of these books. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And essentially these seven manuscripts 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 disappeared for 700 years, and we have a prayer book. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The prayer book was discovered by this guy, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Johan Ludvig Heiberg, in 1906. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And with just a magnifying glass, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 he transcribed as much of the text as he could. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And the thing is that he found two texts in this manuscript 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that were unique texts. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 They weren't an A and B at all; 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they were completely new texts by Archimedes, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and they were called "The Method" and "The Stomachion." 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And it became a world famous manuscript. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Now it should be clear by now 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that this book is in bad condition. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It got in worse condition in the 20th century 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 after Heiberg saw it. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Forgeries were painted over it, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and it suffered very badly from mold. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 This book is the definition of a write-off. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It's the sort of book 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that you thought would be in an institution. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But it's not in an institution, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 it was bought by a private owner in 1998. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Why did he buy this book? 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Because he wanted to make that which was fragile safe. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 He wanted to make that which was unique ubiquitous. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 He wanted to make that which was expensive free. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And he wanted to do this as a matter of principle. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Because not many people are really going to read Archimedes in ancient Greek, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but they should have the chance to do it. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So he gathered around himself the friends of Archimedes, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and he promised to pay for all the work. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And it was an expensive job, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but actually it wouldn't be as much as you think 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 because these people, they didn't come for money, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they came for Archimedes. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And they came from all sorts of different backgrounds. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 They came in from particle physics, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they came from classical philology, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they came from book conservation, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they came from ancient mathematics, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they came from data management, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they came from scientific imaging and program management. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And they got together to work on this manuscript. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The first problem was a conservation problem. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And this is the sort of thing that we had to deal with. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 There was glue on the spine of the book. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And if you look at this photograph carefully, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the bottom half of this rather brown. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And that glue is hide glue. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Now if you're a conservator, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 you can take off this glue reasonably easily. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The top half is Elmer's wood glue. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It's polyvinyl acetate emulsion. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It doesn't dissolve in water once it's dry. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And it's much tougher than the parchment that it was written on. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And so before we could start imagining Archimedes, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 we had to take this book apart. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So it took four years to take it off. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And this is a rare action shot, ladies and gentlemen. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 (Laughter) 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Another thing is that we had to get rid of all the wax, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 because this was used in the liturgical services 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of the Greek Orthodox Church 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and they'd used candle wax. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And the candle wax was dirty, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and we couldn't image through the wax. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So very carefully we had to mechanically scrape off all the wax. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It's hard to tell you exactly 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 how bad the condition of this book is, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but it came out in little bits very often. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And normally in a book, you wouldn't worry about the little bits, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but these little bits might contain unique Archimedes text. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So tiny fragments 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 we actually managed to put back in the right place. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Then, having done that, we started to image the manuscript. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And we imaged the manuscript 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in 14 different wave-bands of light. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Because if you look at something in different wave-bands of light, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 you see different things. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And here is an image of a page 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 imaged in 14 different wave-bands of light. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But none of them worked. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So what we did was we processed the images together, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and we put two images into one blank screen. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And here are two different images of the Archimedes manuscript. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And the image on the left 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 is the normal red image. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And the image on the right is an ultraviolet image. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And in the image on the right 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 you might be able to see some of the Archimedes writing. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 If you merge them together into one digital canvas, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the parchment is brightened in both images 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and it comes out bright. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The prayer book is dark in both images 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and it comes our dark. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The Archimedes text is dark in one image and bright in another. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And it'll come out dark but red, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and then you can start to read it rather clearly. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And that's what it looks like. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Now that's a before and after image, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but you don't read the image on the screen like that. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 You zoom in and you zoom in 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and you zoom in and you zoom in, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and you can just read it now. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 (Applause) 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 If you process the same two images in a different way, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 you can actually get rid of the prayer book text. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And this is terribly important. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Because the diagrams in the manuscript 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 are the unique source for the diagrams 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that Archimedes drew in the sand in the fourth century B.C. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And there we are, I can give them to you. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 With this kind of imaging -- 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 this kind of infrared, ultraviolet, invisible light imaging -- 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 we were never going to image through the gold ground forgeries. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 How were we going to to that? 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Well we took the manuscript, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and we decided to image it in X-ray florescence imaging. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So an X-ray comes in on the diagram on the left 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and it knocks out an electron from the inner shell of an atom. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And that electron disappears. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And as it disappears an electron form a shell farther out 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 jumps in and takes its place. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And when it takes its place, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 it sheds electromagnetic radiation. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It sheds an X-ray. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And this X-ray is specific in its wavelength 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to the atom that it hits. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And what we wanted to get 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 was the iron. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Because the ink was written in iron. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And if we can map 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 where this X-ray that comes out, where it comes from, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 we can map all the iron on the page, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and theoretically we can read the image. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The thing is that you need a very powerful light source to do this. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So we too it to the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in California, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 which is a particle accelerator. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Electrons go around one way, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 positrons go around the other. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 They meet in the middle, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and they create subatomic particles 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 like the [unclear] quark and the [unclear] electron.