NOVA - Infinite Secrets: The Genius of Archimedes

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Rated: Unrated
Type: DVD
Studio: WGBH Boston
Release Date: 2004-01-06
In 1991, a small Medieval prayer book was sold at auction. Miraculously, some original writings of Archimedes, the brilliant Greek mathematician, were discovered hidden beneath the religious text. Through scholarly detective work with the help of modern technology, this book now reveals Archimedes’ stunningly original concepts, ideas, and theories—revelations that, if known sooner, might have reshaped our world.

Many historic figures have been hailed as ahead of their time. Few—if any—are said to be centuries ahead of their time. The Einstein of his era, Archimedes had a sophisticated understanding of mathematics, and designed marvelous war machines for his native Syracuse to use against the invading Romans. Many of Archimedes’ works disappeared during the Middle Ages, but some survived to help inspire the scientific revolution in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. One document that seemed irretrievably lost was his final treatise The Method, which reputedly explained how he achieved his brilliant results—secrets he revealed nowhere else. Now, over 2200 years later, the discovery of The Method has experts and scientists dreaming of what might have been if Renaissance thinkers and other great minds had known of his ideas and been able to build on them.

NOVA explores Archimedes’ rare writings, as well as the book’s mysterious beginnings, tumultuous history and amazing discovery. As the ancient text comes back from the dead, it unlocks its revolutionary contents—the infinite secrets of one of history’s greatest thinkers.

Special DVD features include: activities for educators; materials and activities for librarians; a link to the Infinite Secrets Web site; scene selections; closed captions; and described video for the visually impaired.

On one DVD5 disc. Region coding: All regions. Audio: Dolby stereo. Screen format: Letterboxed.

Rather brief
I had purchased this hoping it to be more about Archimedes. Instead it follows the discovery of a manuscript with Archimedes writings on it. I have read the book that inspired this documentary and it covers the subject briefly but well.

Prepare to be disappointed
I used to enjoy NOVA but not lately. Like most American produced TV this is really dumbed down. This particular NOVA is typical - lots of sizzle and a bit of steak. Perhaps I was expecting too much. I wanted to learn more about Archimedes and his work. Instead I got lot's of information about how a 10th copy of Archimedes manuscript was oblitereated with religous nonsense and half of it was rediscovered. Religeous prayers written over a washed out Archemedes treatice - What a contrast!

Archimedes was the greatest ancient Greek and if you consider what he discovered and did in the 3rd century BC he must be the greatest genius to date! This episode of NOVA teases us with his mathematics without really explaining why the calculus is so important to science and technology. It then muses as to what the world would be like today if his treatise "The Method" was not lost. They seem to omit the fact that what little of Archimedes that did survive for example "the law of the lever", "the laws of hydostatics", etc. were major inputs into the Renaissance and the observationally based scientific method which Archimedes clearly understood.

excellent companion to The Archimedes Codex
I finished reading The Archimedes Codex and enjoyed that immensely. Then I found this NOVA program covering the same ground in a more accessible format. It is a very good summary of the book in many ways and introduces a number of the main contributors to the project.

If you have not read the book, then you will probably want to after you see this show.

Great Man
Archimedes was a mathematical visionary who was ahead of his time, and if his work was used earlier, we would be far more advanced than we are today mathematically, and probably technologically. This discovery has been made by reading his lost manuscript, which has been found and restored by scientists. Archimedes also discovered a way to measure volume by water displacement. But what impressed me the most from the documentary was the techniques used to restore back the Archimedes texts from the damaged manuscript, worth the purchase, but 4 stars only because I'm hard to please.

Eureka - they have found Archimedes' long-lost, most important treatise
This is an utterly fascinating documentary. Not only does it help cast Archimedes in an even more important light than ever, it details one of the most amazing "lost book" stories I've ever read. Lost for over a millennium, then discovered, then lost again for decades, then rediscovered, the last known copy of Archimedes' greatest work has finally reemerged, amazing scholars with its revelations of Archimedes' true genius. Sold at auction in 1998 for two million dollars, this priceless document is now being painstakingly deciphered and translated by a team of experts.

The documentary opens with a summary of Archimedes' life and accomplishments. We may laugh at the story of Archimedes jumping out of his bath and running naked through the streets shouting Eureka, or roll our eyes when we hear of his boast to move the entire world if he only had a place to stand, but his discoveries speak for themselves: e.g., the principles of density and buoyancy, a remarkably accurate estimate of the value for pi, his work with spirals, spheres, etc. The man was also a gifted inventor, especially in the realm of weapons of war - catapults capable of firing at multiple ranges, the burning-mirror that proved so effective against Roman invaders, and advanced pulley and lever systems, just to name a few. When the Romans finally did invade Sicily, Archimedes was specifically targeted and killed (in 212 BC). Interest in mathematics soon declined, reemerging only during the European Renaissance - and now we know that the great thinkers of that new golden age were rediscovering things Archimedes already discovered and wrote about over two centuries before the birth of Christ. If the manuscript of Archimedes' greatest work, The Method, had not been lost, it's certainly realistic to speculate that modern science would be far more advanced than it already is.

The Method was transcribed by several generations of monks, with a final copy being made in the 10th century. Two centuries later, however, a monk ran out of parchment and used that precious copy of Archimedes' book to make a prayer book. This involved cutting the pages, folding them over, and washing or scraping away enough of the original content to allow him to write over what was there. This palimpsest spent centuries in a monastery in the Judean desert before turning up in Constantinople in the early 20th century. In 1906, a philologist named Heiberg discovered the document, realized its true significance, and photographed its pages for his own study. History soon struck again, however, and the manuscript disappeared during the chaos of World War I. It was not until 1971 that a single copy of the manuscript suddenly appeared in Cambridge, England; Greek expert Nigel Wilson learned he could make out most of the faint writing using UV light, but the rest of the manuscript was seemingly lost. We now know it had been in Paris since the 1920s, but now, finally, it is in the hands of experts working to restore it.

The restoration process has not been easy, as you can imagine. The museum curator in charge of the project paints a vivid picture of the terrible state the manuscript is in, having been damaged by fire, mold, modern glue, etc. Curiously, it has also had religious images painted over several pages - pieces of artwork conclusively shown to be modern forgeries. With so many obstacles in the way of reclaiming the "infinite secrets" contained in the manuscript, the documentary goes into painstaking detail in terms of the impressive efforts being made to restore, read, and translate it. The work continues, but some major discoveries have already been made, showing Archimedes to be a man many centuries ahead of his time. Among other things, he had come up with a set of rules for dealing with infinity, proving that he was essentially Newton's immediate predecessor in the discovery of calculus.

As I said, this is a stellar, super-informative documentary. The remarkably mysterious journey of the Archimedes Palimpsest over the last millennium is yet another example of truth being stranger than fiction, and the modern techniques being brought to bear in restoring this ancient manuscript are fascinating in and of themselves. If you have any interest in history or mathematics, you will no doubt be as impressed with this documentary as I am.