Visuals

New technology looks to uncover hidden text on map that influenced Christopher Columbus

The map is referred to as the Martellus map. It is named after its creator, the German cartographer Henricus Martellus, and is thought be have been produced in or around 1491. The only known surviving copy lives at the Beinecke Library at Yale. Being a large wall map, it is 4 by 6.5 feet, and having survived for over 500 years it is understandable that the map has seen better days.  The map, which is usually on display by Beinecke’s service desk, has been relatively unexamined following a peak in interest after its acquisition in the 1960s because it is largely illegible. Now thanks to a new...

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A Tectonic Pop-Up Book

  The supercontinent Pangaea that connected South America and Africa broke apart 200 million years ago. What a better way to convey the moving and shaking of the earth within a physical object than within the confines of a movable book. In ‘The Pangaea Pop-up’ Lesson at TED-Ed, animator Biljana Labovic explains how she and her team of animators created a pop-up book to visualize Pangaea -- and how you can make your own.   [youtube]http://youtu.be/RZR_b753ZJ0[/youtube]   Previously on Book Patrol: America's National Parks: Pop-Up Style Waldo Hunt and Pop-Up Books: A Brief Overview Pop-Up Books Meet Photoshop Maurice Sendak's First...

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Project Hieroglyph: Helping turn Science Fiction toward Utopia

Project Hieroglyph is "a global collective of writers and researchers" whose aim is to turn the dystopian tide of recent science fiction toward creative inspiration. Born in 2011 from a Neal Stephenson article entitled  “Innovation Starvation,” in which he called for "a return to inspiration in contemporary science fiction" the project now includes some of best writers, thinkers, and minds on the planet and its first publication, Hieroglyph, is about to hit the shelves.  The name of Project Hieroglyph comes from the notion that certain iconic inventions in science fiction stories serve as modern “hieroglyphs” – Arthur Clarke’s communications satellite, Robert...

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