This is the story of a book that could have changed the history of the 
World. To the untrained eye, it is nothing more than a small and unassuming 
Byzantine prayer book, yet it sold at Christies for over two million 
dollars. For faintly visible beneath the prayers on its pages are other, 
unique, writings - words that have been lost for nearly two thousand years.

The text is the only record of work by one of the world's greatest minds - 
the ancient Greek, Archimedes - a mathematical genius centuries ahead of 
his time. Hidden for a millennium in a middle eastern library, it has been 
written over, broken up, painted on, cut up and re-glued. But in the nick 
of time scientists have saved the precious, fragile document, and for the 
first time it is revealing just how revolutionary Archimedes' ideas were. 
If it had been available to scholars during the Renaissance, we might have 
reached the Moon over a hundred years ago.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2001/archimedes.shtml


Jeroen

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Wonderful World of Brin-L Website:                  http://www.Brin-L.com
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