Newton Papers: Newton's Waste Book

cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk

84 points·poindontcare··11 comments

Anyone catch a reference to alchemy? I saw some doodles around page 100 but most of the text is hard to read.

He was definitely a firm believer in it, so no surprise there.

There's plenty more about Newton's work on alchemy here: http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/

Hi lab notebook is also great if you're intereted in the chemistry side of things! http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-03975/1

He even includes his own ink recipe here!: http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-03975/29

A usable .PDF would sure be nice.

The site says they are working on transcribing it.

The transcriptions are being prepared by the Newton Project (see http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/prism.php?id=1)

The waste book has been transcribed: http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/catalogue/record/NATP0...

But this is quite a complex manuscript, so in this specific case we are still working on tie-ing the transcription and images together!

Details are not given about size and weight, but it does look like a rather large, thick book ["Extent: 2181 ff. approx.", albeit with "a complex foliation (numbering)"]

Can't help being reminded of the old NYT Sunday newspaper joke - for the man smart enough to read it, and athletic enough to carry it ...

What is the purpose of the drawings of hands, e.g. pg. 61?

They are manicules, a punctuation mark to indicate a note, see more about them here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_(typography)

Fascinating. It took me a while to realize that the symbol that looks like 4^E is actually 'ye', or 'the'.

For anyone curious about 'ye': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)#Middle_and_Earl...

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