Dating Newton's Manuscripts

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Technical Approaches to Dating Newton's Manuscripts Using Watermarks

 

The Newton Watermark Project series - fourth lecture:

 

In this presentation we will discuss methods for capturing and analyzing watermarks in manuscripts, with particular reference to dating material from the Newton corpus.

Maciej Pawlikowski, Head of the Digital Content Unit at Cambridge University Library, will talk about methods and equipment for the capture of watermarks using multispectral imaging. Huw Jones, Head of the Digital Library at Cambridge University Library, will discuss approaches to dating manuscripts using images of watermarks, and some of the challenges and opportunities which have come to light in the project.

 

Newton manuscripts held by Cambridge University Library and by the National Library of Israel together represent the registration of the Papers of Isaac Newton in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.

 

Huw Jones is Head of the Digital Library at Cambridge University Library, and Director of CDH Labs at Cambridge Digital Humanities. Cambridge Digital Library is the University’s main platform for the digital humanities, containing almost 50,000 items ranging from the papers of Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin to manuscript and photograph collections representing the global scope of Cambridge's physical collections. His work spans many aspects of collections-driven digital humanities, from creating and making collections available to their use in a research and teaching context.

 

Maciej Pawlikowski is the Head of the Digital Content Unit at Cambridge University Library. The Unit provides visual content to Cambridge Digital Library and academic researchers fulfilling over 2,000 imaging and licensing requests creating close to 200,000 digital assets annually. He has led many digitization projects, including the Darwin manuscripts and the Friedberg Genizah digitization project. As a member ISO TC/42 JW26 workgroup, he contributes to standards for archival imaging, photography of transparent materials and multispectral imaging. Over the years, he has developed and designed equipment, protocols, and techniques to accommodate specialized imaging of cultural heritage artefacts.

 

Sunday, March 12, 8 pm Israel /7 pm CET /6 pm UK /1 pm EST