H.I. No. 4: Feedback on Feedback: Difference between revisions

Brady: Isaac Newton, uh, you know, all those- all those guys, Hook and Boyle back then, all the way through to your modern greats, you know, Einstein was a- was a Fellow, uh, Niels Bohr, all the way through to Peter Higgs and people like that today,--

Grey: Oh, no, I think- I- I- I really liked it. I thought it was it was really interesting to see. So yeah, when we when we We went on a tour, that we got to go downstairs into the vault blow, and basically see all of the original documents. And it's almost hard to describe because there was such a great variety of things down there. But if you imagine this huge vault, and it would just have the original written letters from all of these famous scientists, to the Royal Society, or from explorers who were writing in about, you know, what they were seeing in new places. And it was almost just very overwhelming in the amount of stuff

Brady 45:38

that is handwritten too, isn't it?

Unknown Speaker 45:39

Yeah, that Yeah, that was that. That was the thing is

Brady 45:42

a letter from Isaac Newton. Oh, what's he got to say from it? Yeah,

Grey 45:45

I did. I did tell my wife we came back I know it was all in this vault. But it was like shockingly casual. Some of the stuff that was just laying around August he was nice enough to give us a tour. I kept saying to him like it makes me nervous. like looking at all the stuff. You know, the the one example, you know was the death mask for Isaac Newton. So the clay I guess it was I'm not sure what the material was that they put over his face after he died, you know to get a print of his face. Oh, it's just like there on the shelf, you know, waiting to be knocked over by you know some clumsy idiot like me who's wandering around and not paying attention.

Brady 46:22

I'll tell you this quick quick, quick interjection here Rupert, who's the other guy that works in the library who you spoke to briefly, but he was the one that came down with this. He normally is the guy that has to handle that mask, and he's done it a few times for me for videos and things like that. And he has a recurring nightmare over time. He drops that mask and it shatters like haunts him. Yeah. And every time I asked him to pick it up, like he he goes a little bit white and tells me you know about my dream, don't you see? So you're not the only one who worries about that?

Grey 46:50

Yes, that was that was that was one of my prevailing feelings there was just like, worry for all of these objects. And we did. We were Talking about how, you know, some of the stuff like like that mask has been digitized. You know, they've done high resolution 3d scans with that. But there's just so many papers and documents that they, they don't have any other copies, except the ones that are in that vault. And it's it. You know, it was very interesting. And, you know, one of the examples that was given is, is like, you don't know necessarily how this stuff is going to be valuable in the future. And the example that was mentioned was talking about the have, you know, all these records of the weather, you know, coming back for hundreds of years, which just sounds like the most boring thing in the whole wide world, right? until, you know, that stuff starts to matter when people are doing, you know, research for the global weather system. And now you actually want that kind of data to be available. And you've got

Brady 47:49

sea levels from Australia from you know, 1800 and,

Grey 47:51

yeah, all of this stuff that just seems just so random. It's so bizarre. Like I can't even remember what was We looked at that book. Maybe you can remind me what what the deal was, but it was it was a book and it had collections of drawings of a volcano, that some member of the Royal Society had paid a monk to go.

Brady 48:13

It was. It was serious. Yes,

Grey 48:15

that's right. It was yes. And one of the members had paid this monk you know, in the days before photography, to go outside every day and sketch What the What Mount Vesuvius looked like what the volcano look like, Yeah, not the

Brady 48:27

plume of smoke out, changing shape and things

Unknown Speaker 48:30

attended to him, as he said, like it was it was like the 1700s version of a webcam. Yeah, right where the webcam takes a picture every 30 minutes, but you can't have a webcam, you just have a monk and you pay him some money and he sends you a sketch every day. And and that was just, you know, collected in this book. So it was it was very, it was really interesting to see.

Brady 48:52

It was funny we went with, with our friend Angela from Google, and I did find it funny when we were down there because I just love all that old stuff and the romance of it, but you and Angela who are both much more kind of digital people, all you could think about was has this been scanned or who should scan this and where Could this be preserved electronically? And whereas I was like, oh, let's touch this or doesn't this smell?

Grey 49:15

That is true. That is true. You had your hands all over everything. And, you know, again, I was surprised to know that it's it is okay to handle these materials just like with your gross monkey hands, like with all their sweat on them and like in dirt, and they're like, Oh, no, don't worry, you know, you pick up these these letters from Robert Hooke. That's totally fine don't worry and their originals we don't have any extra copy but we're going to let you just touch them. And they prefer you to not use gloves which is the secret no one tells you

Brady 49:46

Yeah, cuz because if your gloves you kind of lose that that dexterity and that touch and you're more likely to drop something or rip something.

Grey 49:54

Yeah, you end up being more likely damaged, which is also which is surprising. And another example of how they In TV and movies are not accurate representations of real life. The one thing that was a very almost overwhelming moment was being able to see the kind of original edition of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica, you know, the book, the book that is basically the founding stone of much of modern physics. And that was that was really amazing to be able to see and to be able to actually hold in my hands and I made you take a picture of that now I knew you liked that when you asked for a photo. Yeah. And And honestly, it was only because I saw you going around touching absolutely everything and handling stuff and like whoops, almost dropped it, you know, that I had I had the the bravery to ask if I could hold that book. And I could not believe it when they said yes, you can. You can hold it. Because to be clear, is Isaac, Isaac Newton's seminal work and that copy? It wasn't just a first edition. That was his hand written copy in big sections with notes to the printer. Yeah, so it's like that, like, you know, he actually slaved over that book for who knows how long. And that was the copy that got sent off to the printer, you know, to make the first edition. So it's almost like the zeroeth edition of that book is pretty cool. So I have to say that was that was an amazing moment.

Brady 51:28

But no, I just, my hope was that, you know, that you would say, Oh, I could make a few videos here using all this source material. Like, I want to see some CGP Grey videos, you know, using using all these old documents from hundreds of years ago with some new spin on some country or some border or something we'd never realized before.

Grey 51:48

Yeah, I've got to say it's been it's been running in the back of my mind how to take advantage of that. So I have I have some thoughts and i'm i'm also again, like, I I'm really glad to know that that resource is there. It's it's amazing to be able to see the original original stuff. But it's also often it's you just you come across strange surprises when you're dealing with original materials. And so I'm going to mention something slightly, something slightly nerdy here. But when I was in college, I was rereading the Lord of the Rings series. And I thought, let me start the beginning. I'm going to start with the Hobbit. And by the way, people if you haven't read the hobbit yet, spoiler warning coming up here. So you should pause your podcast now.

Brady 52:38

Take my headphones off, because I haven't read the whole book.

Grey 52:40

You haven't read the hobbit? Are you kidding me?

Unknown Speaker 52:42

Yeah, I haven't read The Hobbit. Are you serious? I haven't read Lord of the Rings either.

Brady 52:49

Well, I think less of me.

Grey 52:51

I'm just surprised actually, I don't think it's not that I think less of you. I'm just I'm just honestly surprised that you you have not read it. Do you know the basic story of The Hobbit.

Brady 53:00

Yes, I know the basic story.

Grey 53:01

Okay, so I'm not going to ruin anything with the basic story then So, and you're just gonna have to listen to this anyway. Because Yeah, this is what we're doing now. So I figured I'll start the beginning. I'll read The Hobbit, and I'm reading The Hobbit and I had read it once as a kid, and I'm going through the book and everything is totally normal until the pivotal scene between Bilbo and Gollum. And the pivotal scene in the book where Bilbo he sort of steals the ring from Gollum and you know, makes his way out of the underneath this mountain and escapes. I did say that in the film. I have seen the first film Yeah, so there's like a fight right? There's there Yeah,

Brady 53:41

it's a battle of wits in a way it was.