Leonardo da Vinci’s Notebook now available on iPad in spectacular High Definition

The British Library has launched a ground-breaking ‘eBook Treasures’ series which allows iPad users to download entire rare manuscripts. Starting with Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Arundel (1478-1518) and Geradus Mercator’s Atlas of Europe (1570s) users can now hold rare, unique and original manuscripts in their hands and explore them in depth and spectacular high-definition.

Developed with Armadillo Systems, each eBook allows users to access greater content and in-depth detail about the item such as written, video and audio interpretation. eBooks are viewable full-screen, with award-winning realistic page-turning and can also be viewed offline.

For more information about the series please visit: www.ebooktreasures.org

Our separate Treasures iPhone, Android, and iPad app provides highlights from 100 treasures. For Victorian books try our 19th Century Historical Collection iPad app.

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About Codex Arundel and Mercator’s Atlas:

The Codex Arundel (1508-10), is one of Leonardo’s most prolific notebooks filled with illustrations and written in ‘mirror script’. His manuscripts document scientific and technological practice before the scientific revolution and few manuscripts by his contemporaries have survived. The Codex Arundel is one of the most important sources for understanding da Vinci’s work as a natural philosopher, engineer and artist.

Gerardus Mercator, arguably the best cartographer of all time, put his Atlas of Europe together to plan the Prince of Cleeves’ tour of Europe. Painstakingly compiled using copies of maps, Mercator pieced them together and pasted them into the atlas.
Future eBook Treasures

75 titles will be available over the next two years, either in their entirety or as a selection of highlights, allowing unprecedented access to some of the British Library’s most precious manuscripts.

‘Literature’ – Alice’s Adventures Underground (1862-64), Carroll’s handwritten and illustrated original of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, William Blake’s notebook (1700s) and Jane Austen’s The History of England (1791)
‘Sacred Texts’ – The Tyndale Bible (1526), the first English language Bible to appear in print and Sultan Baybars’ Quran (1304-6), the epitome of sumptuous Arabic calligraphy
‘Music’ – Handel’s ‘Messiah’ (1741) and Beethoven’s Pastoral Sketchbook (1808).

How do I get them?

eBook Treasures are available for download world-wide from the iBookstore:

Codex Arundel HD Highlights: £3.99
Codex Arundel complete version: £9.99
Mercator's Atlas of Europe £6.99

eBook Treasures are created by the British Library in partnership with Armadillo Systems.