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The Ciphers of the Monks

Author: David A. King

Publisher: Franz Steiner Verlag

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 518

ISBN-13: 9783515076401

This is the first comprehensive study of an ingenious number-notation from the Middle Ages that was devised by monks and mainly used in monasteries. A simple notation for representing any number up to 99 by a single cipher, somehow related to an ancient Greek shorthand, first appeared in early-13th-century England, brought from Athens by an English monk. A second, more useful version, due to Cistercian monks, is first attested in the late 13th century in what is today the border country between Belgium and France: with this any number up to 9999 can be represented by a single cipher. The ciphers were used in scriptoria - for the foliation of manuscripts, for writing year-numbers, preparing indexes and concordances, numbering sermons and the like, and outside the scriptoria - for marking the scales on an astronomical instrument, writing year-numbers in astronomical tables, and for incising volumes on wine-barrels. Related notations were used in medieval and Renaissance shorthands and coded scripts. This richly-illustrated book surveys the medieval manuscripts and Renaissance books in which the ciphers occur, and takes a close look at an intriguing astrolabe from 14th-century Picardy marked with ciphers. With Indices. "Mit Kings luzider Beschreibung und Bewertung der einzelnen Funde und ihrer Beziehungen wird zugleich die Forschungsgeschichte - die bis dato durch Widerspruechlichkeit und Diskontinuit�t gepr�gt ist - umfassend aufgearbeitet." Zeitschrift fuer Germanistik.

In Synchrony with the Heavens, Volume 2 Instruments of Mass Calculation

Author: David King

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2005-06-01

Total Pages: 1142

ISBN-13: 9047406753

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This is the first investigation of one of the main interests of astronomy in Islamic civilization, namely, timekeeping by the sun and stars and the regulation of the astronomically-defined times of Muslim prayer. The study is based on over 500 medieval astronomical manuscripts first identified by the author, now preserved in libraries all over the world and originally from the entire Islamic world from the Maghrib to Central Asia and the Yemen. The materials presented provide new insights into the early development of the prayer ritual in Islam. They also call into question the popular notion that religion could not inspire serious scientific activity. Only one of the hundreds of astronomical tables discussed here was known in medieval Europe, which is one reason why the entire corpus has remained unknown until the present. A second volume, also to be published by Brill, deals with astronomical instruments for timekeeping and other computing devices.

Islamic Astronomy and Geography

Author: David A. King

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-02-13

Total Pages: 357

ISBN-13: 1000585158

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This volume of 12 studies, mainly published during the past 15 years, begins with an overview of the Islamic astronomy covering not only sophisticated mathematical astronomy and instrumentation but also simple folk astronomy, and the ways in which astronomy was used in the service of religion. It continues with discussions of the importance of Islamic instruments and scientific manuscript illustrations. Three studies deal with the regional schools that developed in Islamic astronomy, in this case, Egypt and the Maghrib. Another focuses on a curious astrological table for calculating the length of life of any individual. The notion of the world centred on the sacred Kaaba in Mecca inspired both astronomers and proponents of folk astronomy to propose methods for finding the qibla, or sacred direction towards the Kaaba; their activities are surveyed here. The interaction between the mathematical and folk traditions in astronomy is then illustrated by an 11th-century text on the qibla in Transoxania. The last three studies deal with an account of the geodetic measurements sponsored by the Caliph al-Ma'mûn in the 9th century; a world-map in the tradition of the 11th-century polymath al-Bîrûnî, alas corrupted by careless copying; and a table of geographical coordinates from 15th-century Egypt.

The Abacus and the Cross

Author: Nancy Marie Brown

Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)

Published: 2010-12-07

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 0465009506

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Traces the achievements of medieval Pope Sylvester II, revealing his lesser-known role in promoting scientific awareness throughout turn-of-the-first-millennium Catholicism, in a report that includes coverage of his humble origins and introduction of Arabic numerals to Europe.

A Material History of Medieval and Early Modern Ciphers

Author: Katherine Ellison

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-14

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 135197307X

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The first cultural history of early modern cryptography, this collection brings together scholars in history, literature, music, the arts, mathematics, and computer science who study ciphering and deciphering from new materialist, media studies, cognitive studies, disability studies, and other theoretical perspectives. Essays analyze the material forms of ciphering as windows into the cultures of orality, manuscript, print, and publishing, revealing that early modern ciphering, and the complex history that preceded it in the medieval period, not only influenced political and military history but also played a central role in the emergence of the capitalist media state in the West, in religious reformation, and in the scientific revolution. Ciphered communication, whether in etched stone and bone, in musical notae, runic symbols, polyalphabetic substitution, algebraic equations, graphic typographies, or literary metaphors, took place in contested social spaces and offered a means of expression during times of political, economic, and personal upheaval. Ciphering shaped the early history of linguistics as a discipline, and it bridged theological and scientific rhetoric before and during the Reformation. Ciphering was an occult art, a mathematic language, and an aesthetic that influenced music, sculpture, painting, drama, poetry, and the early novel. This collection addresses gaps in cryptographic history, but more significantly, through cultural analyses of the rhetorical situations of ciphering and actual solved and unsolved medieval and early modern ciphers, it traces the influences of cryptographic writing and reading on literacy broadly defined as well as the cultures that generate, resist, and require that literacy. This volume offers a significant contribution to the history of the book, highlighting the broader cultural significance of textual materialities.

The Code Book: The Secrets Behind Codebreaking

Author: Simon Singh

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Published: 2002-05-14

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0375890122

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"As gripping as a good thriller." --The Washington Post Unpack the science of secrecy and discover the methods behind cryptography--the encoding and decoding of information--in this clear and easy-to-understand young adult adaptation of the national bestseller that's perfect for this age of WikiLeaks, the Sony hack, and other events that reveal the extent to which our technology is never quite as secure as we want to believe. Coders and codebreakers alike will be fascinated by history's most mesmerizing stories of intrigue and cunning--from Julius Caesar and his Caeser cipher to the Allies' use of the Enigma machine to decode German messages during World War II. Accessible, compelling, and timely, The Code Book is sure to make readers see the past--and the future--in a whole new way. "Singh's power of explaining complex ideas is as dazzling as ever." --The Guardian

The Horoscope of Emperor Baldwin II

Author: Filip Van Tricht

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-11-01

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 9004383182

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In this book Filip Van Tricht presents a microstudy of political, social and cultural life in Latin-Byzantine Constantinople and Romania in the mid-13th century.

The Poet's Ogam: A Living Magical Tradition

Author: John-Paul Patton

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2010-10-30

Total Pages: 532

ISBN-13: 1446660338

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The Poet's Ogam is a creative exploration of the Ogam, based on a 17-year study by Irish author John-Paul Patton. The text explores the historical context of Ogam and the relationship between Ogam, poetry and the Gaelic harp. It contains a range of comparative studies between Ogam and the Kabbalah, Runes, I Ching and other systems. The text also presents original creations of an Ogam calendar, a divination system, and a reconstruction of Fidchell (the ancient Irish chess game) based on Ogam. The text further includes a system of Gaelic martial arts based on an elemental Ogam framework, magical Ogam squares, Ogam pentacles and much more, that fill this Tour de Force of contemporary Ogam study and use. The Poet's Ogam carries on the Art and Science of the Filid-the Philosopher Poets who created and developed the Ogam and is a must for anyone with an interest in Celtic spirituality and magick. John-Paul Patton is generally recognised as a leading authority in Ireland of esoteric Ogam studies.

Handbook of Medieval Studies

Author: Albrecht Classen

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2010-11-29

Total Pages: 2822

ISBN-13: 3110215586

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This interdisciplinary handbook provides extensive information about research in medieval studies and its most important results over the last decades. The handbook is a reference work which enables the readers to quickly and purposely gain insight into the important research discussions and to inform themselves about the current status of research in the field. The handbook consists of four parts. The first, large section offers articles on all of the main disciplines and discussions of the field. The second section presents articles on the key concepts of modern medieval studies and the debates therein. The third section is a lexicon of the most important text genres of the Middle Ages. The fourth section provides an international bio-bibliographical lexicon of the most prominent medievalists in all disciplines. A comprehensive bibliography rounds off the compendium. The result is a reference work which exhaustively documents the current status of research in medieval studies and brings the disciplines and experts of the field together.

Second Bibliographic Guide to the History of Computing, Computers, and the Information Processing Industry

Author: James W. Cortada

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 1996-01-30

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 0313388016

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Complementing the author's 1990 bibliography, A Bibliographic Guide to the History of Computing, Computers, and the Information Processing Industry, this bibliography provides 2,500 new citations, covering all significant literature published since the late 1980s. It includes all aspects of the subject—biographies, company histories, industry studies, product descriptions, sociological studies, industry directories, and traditional monographic histories—and covers all periods from the beginnings to the personal computer. New to this volume is a chapter on the management of information processing operations, useful to both historians and managers of information technology. Together with the earlier bibliography, this work provides the most comprehensive bibliographic guide to the history of computers, computing, and the information processing industry. The organization of the book follows that of the earlier work, with the addition of the new chapter on the management of information processing. All entries are new to this volume. Titles are annotated, and each chapter begins with a short introduction. A full table of contents and author and subject indexes enhance accessibility to the material.