Galilean Telescope Homepage Site Map

ACCESSING GALILEO'S MANUSCRIPTS AND PUBLICATIONS

For those lucky enough to have a broadband connection to the internet, the websites at the Institute and Museum of the History of Science (IMSS) and the National Library in Florence (BNCF) provide a wealth of original material by and about Galileo. Although the sites are primarily in Italian, and the source materials mostly in Italian and sometimes Latin, Galileo's diagrams and illustrations may be of interest to a wide audience. In addition to the language barrier, access to these sites has been implemented through a combination of Java-script and third party web browser plug-ins which cause most browsers to loose their familiar buttons and make navigation extremely difficult for the uninitiated. Trying to navigate via a dial-up connection can be especially frustrating. The following instructions may help those interested in exploring these resources, and should, in fact, make it quite easy and efficient to locate material in the National Edition of Le Opere via either the Galileo//Thek@ search menu or direct page access even over a dial-up. In addition to the documents provided by the libraries in Florence, many items related to Galileo and other 17th century astronomers may be retrieved via Gallica, an equally wonderful free digital document service provided by the National Library of France (BNF).

This webpage is organized as follows:

First, directions are given for using the IMSS's multi-faceted Galileo//Thek@ website, and its related, but separate Cumulative Bibliographic Archive and Digital Library. Next, directions are given for finding bibliographic records of Galilean manuscripts through the Galileo Digitale website at the BNCF, and for viewing digital images of them (when available). Then we explain how to use Gallica, a service whose coverage somewhat overlaps that of the IMSS Digital Library, but tends to be both more extensive and easier to use. Finally, at the bottom of the page, we give a few additional links to other on-line resources providing access to publications related to 17th century astronomy.

The specific topics covered are:

Note: all links to external sites given on this page are set to open in separate windows. To return to this page simply close the windows displaying the external sites. Some of the links by-pass the normal interface to the websites. Most of these links worked as of February 2008, but, since the implementation and content of those sites could change at any time, there is no guarantee they will continue to work in the future.

IMSS Website: Galileo//Thek@

The official gateway to the Institute and Museum of the History of Science's (Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza) Galileo//Thek@ project is via the link near the picture of Galileo on the right side of the IMSS Homepage. This brings up a Shockwave animation with orbiting balls in the lower part of the screen and three stationary balls at the top. For English-speaking visitors, scroll down to the lower right hand corner of the lower screen and click the gray oval button labeled "ENG" -- this will switch the display to English (note: this is not the same as the "ITALIANO/ENGLISH" button in the black bar at the top of the screen). Clicking on the "?" button will bring up a limited amount of help, but only in Italian.

Galileo Thek Entry Screen Balls Clicking on the three balls in the upper panel is supposed to slide the lower panel (horizontally) to three distinct positions. For example, if you point your mouse at the middle (violet) ball in the top panel, the display should look something like that shown here. If you now click on this middle ball (in the upper panel), you will see the lower panel slide over to a new animation of thirteen orbiting balls. These balls represent the twelve distinct "archives" or "databases" that comprise the Galileo//Thek@ project plus the "lexicon". Clicking on each orbiting ball should bring up a description of the contents of that archive, and a button you can click to "Get the archive." Clicking on any of the "Get the archive" buttons should bring up the main Galileo//Thek@ search page, which is also implemented in a combination of Javascript and Shockwave, and opens in a new, separate window without any of the familiar browser buttons.

On future visits, the most efficient way to get into the main database is simply to click on the large blue ball in the center of the lower panel. It should say Galileo//Thek@ when you point at it with your mouse. If you cannot find the large blue ball with two smaller balls orbiting around it, you may need to click on the leftmost (gray) "Home" ball in the upper panel, to return the lower panel to its default position. Once the database has opened (by clicking on the large blue ball) you do not need to return to this introductory display.

The main Galileo//Thek@ database window will itself be divided into an upper and a lower panel. In the upper right of the screen, there is a small gray oval button labeled "ENG". Clicking this will turn most of the labels and prompts into English (although the content will remain in the original language). If the display does not switch to English, try closing the window and re-entering through the large blue ball labeled "Get Galileo Thek@" in the middle of the display obtained by clicking the left-hand (gray) ball in the panel shown above. If that doesn't work, you may need to try a different browser.

Note: the Shockwave/Java-script features seem to load and run significantly faster in some browsers and operating systems than others, but they all have their problems. When first tested in December 2004 with Windows 95, the animation of the three orbiting balls worked erratically in Internet Explorer, and it was not always possible to view the "Info@The Databases" feature described above. In Opera, the "Get Archive" links did not always work, making it impossible to enter the main database; and in Netscape/Mozilla it was not possible to change the main database display from Italian to English. If you are having trouble, and wish only to view material in the National Edition, try the direct link described below.

On the main Galileo//Thek@ search page, the actual items of content are accessed by entering search words or topics in the boxes that appear along the left and clicking the appropriate "GO" button. Arrayed across the top of the screen is Shockwave panel with a series of colored balls corresponding to the archives described above. They are labeled (see above for how to get a more thorough description of the contents of each archive):

Clicking on the balls alters the search boxes that appear along the left hand side of the screen, and in that way provides access to the various "Archives" contained on the website. The drop-down boxes and the boxes labeled "Filter" are where you enter search terms. Searches are initiated by clicking the "GO" buttons. For example, clicking on the red "TXT" ball should make the left-hand panel appear as shown here (with a portion of the Shockwave banner shown at the top). TXT Search Panel In this case, the boxes are appropriate for searching the National Edition of Le Opere. (Note: You may see a portion of the left-hand display truncated or invisible, like the lower part of the second "GO" shown here. This happens because the lower part of the screen itself consists of multiple fixed-size frames, the lower frames sometimes hiding the upper ones. To avoid this problem try switching your computer to its maximum screen size [maximum pixels] and then maximize the browser window.) Using, as an example, the "Work list" option one can select, as shown, various categories (Works by Galileo, etc.) from the drop-down box, then upon clicking "GO" one sees a second drop-down box asking if one is looking for works in Latin, Italian or both, and pressing "GO" again one sees a series of yellow folders on the right hand side of the screen. Each folder represents a section or logical unit of the National Edition (see below). Clicking on any one of them will switch to a new display for viewing that item (sometimes it is possible to right-click on a yellow folder icon or other item and open its contents in a normal browser window). If the search requested by "GO" results in too many folders to display on one page, there will be a list of page numbers across the top of the section which can be clicked to show successive groups of folders. In addition to the "Work list" option you can enter an author name or document title and click the neighboring "GO", or directly enter a volume and page number in the boxes at the bottom of the screen and click that "GO". Finally at the top of the search panel is a "Thematic index": clicking the "GO" next to this will bring up a series of sub-options, and clicking the successive "GO's" will eventually bring up a scrolling menu tree down the lower left side of the screen. Clicking on the "+" marks in the tree will either expand the tree or bring up a series of relevant folder icons along the right side of the screen, as will clicking on any item in the menu tree.

Although the browser's normal navigation buttons are hidden while displaying the Galileo//Thek@ site, there are oval gray buttons in the band near the top of the screen which are supposed to provide back/forward, history and bookmarking functions. The back and forward buttons may not work exactly as expected. It is probably easier and safer to use the history list (denoted by a "i"-shaped icon). Do not click the little "HOME" icon. This will completely close the window and revert to the orbiting balls animation, forcing you to re-enter Galileo//Thek@ and re-load the Shockwave navigation panel, which is rather frustrating over a dial-up connection.

Accessing Galileo//Thek@ through its normal Shockwave/Java interface is presumably the most desirable and reliable approach, but for those unable to do so, or wanting only to rapidly access material in the National Edition, the following link should bring up the English-language search panel of the TXT database (as shown above) in a normal browser window without the Shockwave banner at the top of the screen. It should also load rapidly, even over a dial-up connection:

  http://moro.imss.fi.it/lettura/LetturaWEB.DLL?AZIONE=CATALOGO

This should display in any browser, but the various "GO" buttons may or may not work depending on their Java-script implementation. The one for making requests by Volume and Page number seems most reliable. The "Thematic index", which classifies all the material in the National Edition by subject, does not seem to be available in this way, but the "Work list" is. Requesting:  Work list... "Volume" GO -- "All volumes" GO should bring up a convenient clickable index to the complete National Edition looking something like this: Index to the National Edition


Note: there are fairly frequent interruptions in the availability of the "TXT" service. If you get the message "SERVICE UNAVAILABLE" when trying to access a page from the National Edition try again in a few hours.


Examples of Item Retrieval

As an example of the content in Galileo//Thek@ if you enter Volume 3 and Page 880 in the TXT database search boxes shown above, you should get a facsimile copy of a page containing the image shown on the left surrounded by Latin text. Galileo's drawing of the Trapezium Galileo's 1st observation of the Neptune This is Galileo's observation of the Trapezium stars in the sword of Orion made on February 4, 1617. The stars which Galileo has labeled "c", "g", and "i" are the three brightest stars in this well known cluster. In modern nomenclature, they are the "D", "C" and "A" components of Theta 1 Orionis (also known as 41 Orionis). The spacing from "c" to "g" and from "g" to "i" is currently about 13 arc-seconds. "c" is a 5th magnitude star; while "g" and "i" are roughly 7th magnitude. Galileo's "b" is the 5th magnitude star Theta 2 Orionis (43 Orionis); while "a" is an anonymous 6th magnitude star sometimes regarded as a companion of "b". As pointed out by Czech amateur Leos Ondra, Galileo's text states that the apparent spacing of stars "a" and "g", as seen through his telescope, exactly matched the apparent spacing of two of the stars in Orion's belt as seen with the unaided eye. This implies a power of 27 for his telescope. Shown to the right is an image from page 452 of the same volume. The circle with the solid line through it shows Galileo's measurements of Jupiter and its moons on the night of December 27, 1612. The object labeled "fixa" at the extreme left, which Galileo assumed was a "fixed" star, is thought to be the first ever observation of the planet Neptune (magnitude ∼8), more than two centuries before its official discovery. The notations at the top indicate how the original of the document is cataloged at the BNCF (see below). Galileo's observations of Jupiter's satellites and related calculations cover pp. 425-864 of Volume 3 with still more on pp. 931-966. More miscellaneous astronomical observations are collected on pp. 869-880 and elsewhere (use the "Thematic index", if you have access to it, and look under "Astronomia").

The text of Martin Horky's letter to Kepler of April 27, 1610 (complaining about Galileo's telescope) will be found on pp. 342- 343 of Volume 10 (Letter 301); while a complete facsimile copy of his later published diatribe against Galileo starts on p. 129 of Volume 3. A brief biographical snippet about Horky can be found in the BIOG database of Galileo//Thek@. Note that when an item from the National Edition is being displayed, clicking on "Volume Index" and then "Image Repository" will show all the graphical content (illustrations) present in that volume or logical unit. For example, Galileo's drawing of the planets (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars and Venus) from Il Saggiatore appears on p. 361 of Volume 6 and will also be seen in the Image Repository for that item.


Locating Items in the National Edition from a Known Volume and Page Number

In addition to the link to the TXT search panel suggested above, it should be possible to directly access any page in the National Edition using either of the following templates (most of the direct links to material in the National Edition given on the present website use the first of these two methods):

      http://moro.imss.fi.it/lettura/LetturaWEB.DLL?VOL=10&VOLPAG=358
or
      http://moro.imss.fi.it/lettura/LetturaWEB.DLL?MODO=PAGINA&VOLPAG=10-358

These examples should bring up page 358 of Volume 10 (ending in the passage in Martin Horky's letter to Kepler claiming Galileo's telescope makes the star Spica appear double) in a page browsing mode. Pages such as this, with minimal graphic content should load very rapidly even over a dial-up connection. You can go directly to any other page in the National Edition by altering the "10" and "358" in the above web address when you see it displayed in your web browser's address bar. This technique is particularly useful when trying to trace citations appearing in a scholarly book or journal article, most of which specify the volume and page number for the item of interest. As always, if the retrieved page is in photo-facsimile mode, you can view a full resolution image of it by clicking on the initial thumbnail.

In the page browsing mode, you can move to neighboring pages (within the range indicated in the upper part of the display -- in this case a logical unit called "Carteggio"=Letters, comprising pp. 9-508 of Volume X) by clicking the dark blue double left/right arrow buttons in the display, or enter any other page number from that volume in the search box and click "GO". If you click "volume index" you will see a display of all the logical sub-units within "Carteggio X (9-508)". This particular letter (Number 314, printed in Volume X) is, somewhat confusingly, item 315, and clicking on that link will open the same letter, by itself, in a "Full text" or logical unit display (Favaro numbered all the letters appearing in the National Edition sequentially; in the on-line version, the letters contained in each volume have been assigned new numbers, corresponding to their logical unit position in that volume. To avoid confusion, in referring to letters it is best to use Favaro's numbering system.). In the "Full text" mode, the complete logical item, together with its footnotes, is shown on a single page. Page numbers in the National Edition are indicated only by small symbols such as [0359] indicating the point at which page 359 begins. You navigate by moving to the preceding or following logical unit using the labeled red hyperlinks in the yellow band near the top of the display (in this case, Items 314 and 316 = Letters 313 and 315). In both display formats, the blue superscripts at the left are paragraph numbers, and the underlined red superscripts are hyperlinks to the footnotes. The sections labeled "Avvertimento" at the start of most volume indices are Favaro's introduction to and general notes on that "volume".

To expand slightly on the previous example, scholarly journal articles frequently contain references to letters printed in the National Edition. If a Volume/Page citation is given, the easiest way to retrieve a complete copy of the letter is to go directly to the indicated volume and page in a normal internet browser window using the method described above (click on one of the sample links, then modify the volume and page, as necessary, in your browser's address bar). The number assigned to the letter by Favaro will appear in the heading near the top of the page. Click on the "indice volume" link to go to the Volume Index for that volume. Scroll down (or use your browser's Find feature) to locate the desired letter number in the index, and click on the link next to it. This will bring up the complete (possibly multi-page) letter, with all footnotes and thumbnails of the illustrations, in a single browser page. If you wish, you can then use your browser's normal print/save functions to save it for off-line study. Alternatively, you can retrieve entire volumes of letters in machine-readable form from LiberLiber.

This technique can be used to efficiently locate (in a normal browser window) a citation to any page in any volume of the National Edition, although in the earlier volumes you will generally be able to save or print only a single page at a time. To download/print larger sections in PDF format for off-line study, it is more convenient to use Gallica.


The IMSS Cumulative Bibliography

Besides the red "TXT" ball, the green "BIBL" ball at the end of the row at the top of the screen is of particular interest. This provides access to a 15,000 item compilation of bibliographic citations to both modern and historic books and articles related to Galileo. Many of the items are cross-indexed to relevant passages in the National Edition as well as to other "exhibits" on the website. Many are also cross-indexed to the IMSS library catalog which maintains a separate and extensive Cumulative Bibliographic Archive, classified by subject matter, of books and research articles, primarily published in Italy, relevant to the history of science and technology. In the sections labeled "Strumenti" (= instruments) and "Astronomia" one will find long lists of references dealing with Galileo's telescopes and astronomical observations. Despite the vast number of references given, these lists tend to be incomplete as they focus on publications appearing in the lesser known European journals, especially items published in Italy.

The IMSS maintains a number of other searchable bibliographies, such as its Italian Bibliography of the History of Science (BISS) a database of all recent articles on the history of science published in Italy. This, and the Cumulative Bibliography of Galileiana, can be searched using the IMSS library's main Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC). The initial page gives a list of choices for the databases you wish to include.

The serious researcher will want to supplement results from the IMSS with searches in the standard English language bibliographic databases or Google Scholar. The BISS (together with the Isis Current Bibliography of the History of Science and the Current Bibliography in the History of Technology and Culture) is one of the main components integrated into RLG's Eureka History of Science, Technology, and Medicine database, a password-protected bibliographic search service which you might find more convenient to use if you are at a location with a license, as it will provide links to items available at that institution. The RLG Eureka system has a separate database devoted to the History of Art, which contains many additional items related to Galileo and his times. Finally, Thomson Scientific's password-protected ISI Web of Science is quite helpful for determining if there has been any follow-up to, or comment on, a particular historical article in the more strictly scientific literature.


The IMSS Digital Library

In addition to Galileo//Thek@, the IMSS hosts a growing digital library, an amazing collection of photographic facsimiles of early texts relevant to the history of science and technology. For some texts the photographic facsimiles are accompanied by machine-readable transcriptions. The IMSS digital library appears to be in state of active development and growth, so it is probably best to check the IMSS's current index of library services to see what is available and how it is best accessed. For example, they have recently added free full text access to several of the museum's publications, including their scholarly journal Nuncius and their new Galilaeana e-journal.

The Index of Services gives the impression that there are many separate digital libraries. There actually appears to be only one. But clicking on the various icons will point you, initially, to the subset of items relevant to that particular topic. It is, for example, much easier to find the various parts of Nuncius by clicking on the Nuncius Online icon, as opposed to trying to find the pieces in the Digital Library's full alphabetical list of contents. One sees, for example, that Nuncius was formerly known as Annali dell'Istituto di storia della scienza, and direct links to several important supplements (such as astronomer Guglielmo Righini's collected commentaries on Galileo's observations) are also given. Incidentally, the new e-journal Galilæana (which seems to be issued once a year, and is itself a sort of supplement to Nuncius), has the interesting feature that the articles are supposed to be accompanied by on-line reprints of many of the historic materials referenced in them. This is indicated by a little pointing hand symbol in the margin of the text. For example, the article by Sven Dupre in the 2005 issue is supposed to be accompanied, among other things, by an online reprint of Giambattista della Porta's rare book De Telescopio. Such items are supposed to be available on a special Galilaeana website, but this feature does not yet seem to have been fully implemented. The IMSS also once sponsored an historical journal called Physis, which for the most part preceded Annali dell'Istituto, but that, unfortunately, does not seem to be available online.

Because items are retrieved via a complex system of JavaScript menus it is difficult or impossible to give direct links to items in the IMSS Digital Library, and, because of variations in spelling, it is sometimes hard to guess how a particular item may be cataloged. Fortunately, the search capability allows you to locate items by date without knowing the exact spelling.

Note: to properly use the IMSS Digital library, your screen resolution must be set to at least 1024x768. As with Galileo//Thek@, some of the menus and buttons will be invisible at lower resolutions. In particular, you will not be able to use the Search Menu (the magnifying glass in the upper left of the Digital Library screen) because pointing at the magnifying glass invokes a vertical drop-down menu with "Search" and "Clear" buttons at the bottom. With a screen resolution of less than 1024x768, these buttons will be off the screen, and you won't be able to click on them.

Once in the Digital Library proper, select the item you seek using either the alphabetical list across the top of the screen or the search capability. Selected items are displayed in a two-pane format, controlled by a toolbar. The right hand pane is either a photographic image of a page, or a transcription. The left hand pane can also be a photographic image or a transcription (giving a two page view), but it has additional options. To navigate through an electronic publication, click the little "I" button towards the left end of the toolbar. This will transform the left hand pane into an index of the sections available in the document. Clicking on any item in the index will fetch that section for display in the right hand pane. This is generally quicker and easier than attempting to move through the entire document a page at a time, and more precise than using the slider above the page images. Within a section, use the left-right buttons. To the left side of the screen there is a PDF button for downloading the entire selected item for off-line viewing. Unfortunately, the PDF files, like the default display, are in a marginally legible (150 dpi) fax quality format. Click on any of the displayed facsimile pages (in the left or right hand panels) to see a much more readable high resolution (400 dpi) "zoomed" version of the page. If you examine the properties of the links generated for displaying the images you may notice that the originals are all JPEG photographs, with the low resolution version designated by an "r" suffix, and the zoomed version having the identical file name but with a "z" suffix. Each photo represents a page (see our, for example, our directions for downloading a copy of an authentic seventeenth century resolution target for testing the performance of a telescope). Unfortunately, access to this wonderful free service is not always reliable, and you may experience difficulty trying to view the digital images you request. If you are unable to display the pages corresponding to an item listed in the left-hand panel index, you may still be able to retrieve it by highlighting the desired item and requesting a PDF download of it. Although the quality is not as good, this seems to work even when the pages fail to display directly.

A few of the antique books available through the IMSS Digital Library may still be available through an older, and in some ways more user-friendly, interface. This link should take you to a page giving access to facsimiles of some of Galileo's printed works through the older interface. From this page, one should, for example, be able to find the engraving of the Moon shown on the home page of the current website on page 16 of an early printing of Sidereus Nuncius which also contains many hand-written annotations. However, even if this older interface continues to be supported, it seems to provide access to only a small fraction of the items currently available.

Items in the Digital Library can also, usually, be located using the IMSS library's main Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC), which is available in both in Italian in English. Once an item has been located, if you request the long record in HTML format you should find a direct link to the electronic resource if images of the item are available.

The IMSS Digital Library is by no means the only on-line source of books related to the history of astronomy. In fact, the Gallica service of the National Library of France provides access to a much wider and more eclectic collection, particularly of historic books written by non-Italian authors. In cases where the collections overlap, you will probably find the Gallica interface easier to use.


BNCF Website: Galileo Digitale

The Galileo Digitale project at the National Central Library of Florence's (Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze) can be found by following the Biblioteca digitale links on the BNCF homepage, then looking for Manoscritti in the left-hand panel, and finally clicking on Galileo. Galileo Digitale is a combination library catalog and electronic display, and appears to be the pilot project for a larger plan. Access is often slow, and the pages sometimes come up blank. This seems to be a server problem. Try again in a few minutes. When the main page works, it is a typical library access form. The form is available only in Italian and offers the following search fields:

Clicking the "Lista..." button next to any field should bring up a list of possible entries for that field; and selecting one of these choices and clicking "Copia..." should return to the search page with that field filled in with the selected item. Clicking "CERCA!" after filling out the form brings up one or more pages of search results (the "Lista Breve" or Brief Listing). If more than one page is needed links labeled "[Inizio]=first page", "[Precedente]=previous page", "[Successivo]=next page", and "[Fine]= last page" will be available to help you navigate through them.

When the results of a search spill over many pages, trying to navigate through them one page at a time using the Precedente/Successivo buttons can became an extremely daunting task. The astute user will notice that clicking these buttons alters a number appearing in the URL shown in the web browser's address bar. Once a search has been initiated, the cumbersome Precedente/Successivo system can be short-circuited by manually altering the number in the URL. This allows one to skip forward or back by an arbitrary number of pages.

NOTE: the BNCF server is inherently slow. Be sure to use your mouse to click on the buttons on the search form. Pressing the ENTER key on your computer after making an entry in the search form will give unexpected and unpredictable results. Most frequently it will initiate a request for a sorted listing of the complete contents of Galileo Digitale, which will not only take a very long time, but will probably result, eventually, in an error message.

Most of the materials related directly to Galileo are contained in a series of folios designated Gal. 1 through Gal. 347. Typing one of these names in the Segnatura box and Clicking "CERCA!" will bring up a list of the contents of each. Alternatively, one can simply type "Gal" or "Gal." in the Segnatura box to get a listing of the contents of all the Galileiana folios. Clicking on any item in the resulting Lista Breve will give a complete bibliographic record, including a list of references (if any) to this item in the National Edition. Only a relatively small number of the items in the Galileiana folios have yet been digitized for viewing over the internet (at present, Gal. 48, 71, 73-76, 236, 257, 259-273 and 275-282).

To browse through the electronic images only, it is sufficient to select one of the folios listed under "Elenco Immagini/Trascr." (leaving all the other boxes blank) and press "CERCA!". A "Lista Breve" indicating all the document titles in that folio will appear. Clicking on the document title will bring up a bibliographic description of the item; while clicking on the small image of Mother & Child appearing to the right of the item (if it is present) will bring up the electronic facsimile and possibly a transcription as well.

BNCF Lista Breve Example For example, according to the "Lista Breve" for "Gal. 48", the second item has something to do with Sidereus Nuncius. Clicking on the text description "2 . Manoscritto, Sidereus Nuncius," in the "Lista Breve" brings up a bibliographic record explaining, among other things, that the author of this document Galileo Galilei, that the text is in Latin, with the opening words "Magna equidem...", and closing words "...expectet candidus lector." and that it is mentioned or appears in Volume III (Pt. 1) of the National Edition of Le Opere on pp. 17-47; 59-96; 962; and 963. Clicking on the Image Icon at the end of the row for item 2 in the "Lista Breve" (as shown above, the mouse cursor should say "Immagine" when you point at the icon) will bring up the item in graphical form -- in this case, Galileo's handwritten and heavily corrected manuscript of Sidereus Nuncius. Unfortunately, navigation on the image pages is via Java-script menus and the manuscript itself is seen through the small (though adjustable) scrolling window of a third-party viewer. The available pages in the manuscript are listed down the left side of the browser page ["Carta" precedes the page number; "r" (recto) means the front of the page; "v" (verso) means the back (often blank)]. Clicking on these links will bring up the pages, one-by-one in the small viewing window, where they can be flipped & zoomed. Also, for some documents, a text transcription will appear in the lower half of the screen. The pages appear to be numbered successively for all the items in a particular folio (such as Gal. 48), but only one item can be viewed at a time. Incidentally, Item 1 in the above listing contains the official hand-written minutes of Galileo's demonstration of his telescope in Venice in 1609; while Item 3 is Galileo's famous journal of his observations of the satellites of Jupiter (referred to here as the Medician Planets) starting on January 7, 1610.

Since the BNCF catalog is a complete record of the library's holdings, it contains references to many items which cannot yet be viewed in digital format. In general, the "Lista Breve" that comes up after pressing CERCA! will show a mix of items, some with image links and some without.

With considerable effort it is possible to view the electronic documents outside the small window imposed by the BNCF viewer. To do this one has to observe closely the web address that appears when you load a page into the viewer, and copy this address into you web browser's address bar. For example, six of Galileo's watercolor paintings of the Moon appear on the "recto" (front) side of page 28 of Gal. 48. The image of this page appears to be stored as a 165 kb JPEG picture on the BNCF web-server. The following link brings up this image directly, at full scale, in a normal browser window:

http://193.206.206.9/cgi-galileo/viewimg.pl?nfolio=48&frame=img&key=2%2328%23r

"nfolio" gives the number of the image set; while after the "key=" it appears that the first "2" refers to Item 2 in the set, "28" is the page number within that set, and "r" requests the recto side of that page. The significance of the two "23"s and "page= 1" are unknown, but seem to be required. Other pages and sides can be called up by altering the folio, item, page and side values. For example, an additional Moon painting and horoscope (154 kb) are on the back of page 29:

http://193.206.206.9/cgi-galileo/viewimg.pl?nfolio=48&frame=img&key=2%2329%23v

To form this URL the previous web address has been altered by changing the "28" to "29" and the "r" to "v".

Other pages of interest can be called up using this method. For example, page 28 has a verso side (blank) and page 29 has a recto side (containing a second horoscope).

BNCF Thesaurus Icon An additional, and somewhat independent, objective of the BNCF Galileo Digitale project is to provide a capability for digitally searching through the full text of the manuscripts in their collection. This so-called thesaurus service is accessed by clicking on the clipboard icon that can be found in the upper right corner of most of the Galileo Digitale webpages. The search page offers a list of possible terms you may wish to search for, categorized by language and topic. These can be copied and pasted into the search box. You are also free to enter your own target text. If your target text is found, a list of matching documents will appear. Each document will be listed twice. The first link gives the standard bibliographic record. The second link gives a plain text electronic transcription of the page from the document containing the target text. This service works, of course, only for those documents which have been transcribed into electronically-readable plain text.


Accessing BNCF Manuscripts via the IMSS

An alternate, and in some ways easier, method of accessing manuscripts in the BNCF collection, especially their digital images, is through the Manuscripts area of the IMSS's Galileo//Thek@ website. This is accessed by clicking the MSS tab in the Shockwave panel at the top of the Galileo//Thek@ screen. One is then presented with a search box, similar to that shown above for the TEXT area, with many options. For example, in the English language version, if one searches for the text "Gal" under "Shelfmark," one will get, in the left-hand side of the screen, a list of the 347 Galileiana folios at the BNF. By clicking on any one of these, a list of its contents will appear on the right-hand side (possibly spread over several pages). Clicking, in turn, on any one of these contents items will bring up a bibliographic description similar to that at the BNCF website. The advantage is that if digital images are available, both a "record" and an "images gallery" tab will be displayed. Clicking on the "images gallery" tab brings up thumbnail images of each page in the document, and clicking on the thumbnail allows you to view the page in full screen mode. You will probably find this more comfortable than the BNCF document viewer.

For those preferring direct access, most of the images stored at the IMSS are named in a straightforward manner. For example, an image of the first page in the sequence of Moon drawings described above (page 28-recto of folio Gal. 48) is located at:

http://moro.imss.fi.it:9000/struts-aig/manoscritti/images/gali_48/c_028r.jpg

Calling up this page in your web browser, and then altering the last part to 028v will bring up the back (verso) side of the same page (which is blank). The front and back of any other page, or pages from other folios can be accessed in a similar way. The images appear to be identical to those on the BNCF website.

The problem with the IMSS website is that it seems to have digital images for a smaller number of documents than are available directly through the (more cumbersome) BNCF site. In particular, they appear, at present, to have images only from folios Gal. 48, 72, 73, 74, 76 and a few pages from Gal. 87 (click here for a directory and complete listing of manuscript images available from the IMSS; curiously Gal. 72 is available through the IMSS, but not through the BNCF where it is housed).

Although neither site provides access to the many Galileo-related items stored at locations outside Florence, a few additional Galileo-related documents, not at the BNCF, may be viewed through the DOCS section of Galileo//Thek@.


Locating Manuscripts mentioned in the National Edition

A final problem is how to find an original document referred to in the National Edition of Galileo's works. As indicated above, if a manuscript has been located in the BNCF's Galileo Digitale or on the IMSS's Galileo//Thek@, the bibliographic record will give a clear reference to any citations to it in the National Edition. Going the other way is not so easy. The difficulty arises because the editors of the National Edition refer to the source manuscripts using a somewhat out-dated cataloging system. For example, in the introduction to Volume 3, Favaro tells us that the facsimiles of the first draft of Sidereus Nuncius are taken from "Mss. Gal., Par. III, T. III, car. 8 e seg". The bibliographic record for this item at the BNCF (see above) informs us that the folio now called Gal. 48 is alternatively known as Div. 2a - P. III, t. 3, and Galileo's manuscript does indeed appear on pages 8 and following, as Favaro indicates.

Suppose we wanted to see if there is a digital image of the original manuscript in which Favaro found the Trapezium observation reproduced above. Looking at page 880 of Volume 3 of the National Edition we see the source cited as "Mss. Gal., P. III, T. IV, car. 208t". On the BNCF's Galileo Digitale search page, clicking Lista.. next to Antica Segnatura tells us that "Div. 2a - P. III, t. 4" is one of the possible old shelfmark codes. Unfortunately, the Copia... feature seems not to be implemented for this list, and it is not at all obvious how the antique shelfmark codes are supposed to be entered in the Galileo Digitale search form. However, one can click directly on the "Div. 2a - P. III, t. 4" entry in the list of Antique Shelfmarks, and this will bring up the Lista Breve for that item. From it, we see that we have requested something entitled "Manoscritto, Osservazioni e calcoli relativi ai Pianeti Medicei," a volume, now designated as folio Gal. 49, containing items from 1610-1619.

Alternatively, by looking at the URL in the address bar, we can see that we could have gone directly to this Lista Breve by requesting:

http://alpha9.bncf.firenze.sbn.it/cgi-galileo/queryCmd.cgi?cmd=&antica_segnatura=DIV+++++2a+%2d+P+III+T+++++4

In theory one can go directly to the Lista Breve for other items cited in the National Edition by altering the numbers (both Roman and Arabic) in the above URL to match the manuscript number indicated by Favaro. However, the BNCF server is very finicky about the syntax, and altering the number of "+" signs from the number it expects will cause the search to fail.

Returning to the Trapezium example, clicking on the first line in the Lista Breve (the gray-shaded bar for folio Gal. 49), opens a page describing the entire contents of the folio. Returning to the Lista Breve and clicking on Item 1 (the lightly shaded line saying "1. Manoscritto, Osservazioni e calcoli relativi ai Pianeti Medicei") brings up a detailed bibliographic listing for that item. Even with a very limited understanding of Italian, one can gather that the item in question consists of manuscript pages in Latin, with the pages numbered 4-246, so Favaro's reference to page 208t would indeed fall in this range. The listing also tells us that a large portion of this item is reproduced photographically in the National Edition. But you may have already noticed that to the right of Item 1 in the Lista Breve, there was no icon of the Mother and Child. So the answer to the original question is that, unfortunately, there are at present no digital images of this item available over the internet. So if you want to see the actual text of Galileo's Trapezium observation in his own handwriting so will have to go in person to the BNCF and ask to see page 208 of Gal. 49.

There is actually a fairly simple and orderly correspondence between the antique shelfmarks cited in the National Edition and the modern BNCF folio numbers. At some time in the future we may provide a cross-index; but, for the present, given a Favaro shelfmark, you should be able to locate the manuscripts using the techniques mentioned above.


National Library of France Website: Gallica

Gallica is an amazing digital document retrieval service offered by the National Library of France (BNF) in Paris. It is said to contain over 70,000 digitized works, both books and periodicals, all freely available over the internet. Like the IMSS Digital Library, it should be a great interest to anyone wishing to consult original source material related to the history of astronomy. Although concentrating on the classics of French history and literature, many of which have been transcribed into machine-readable/searchable form, the Gallica collection includes a wide range of historic works in other languages, including a complete facsimile copy of Favaro's National Edition of Galileo's works, and a couple of supplementary works connected to it that do not seem to be available through Galileo//Thek@. The original works of many other major and minor 17th century astronomers, such as Kepler, Huygens, Gassendi, Riccioli, etc. are also available; as well as those of astronomers from other eras (e.g., Ptolemy). The periodicals include several in German and English, the latter including both the Proceedings and Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, in which many early astronomical observations were recorded from 1665 on (the French equivalent of this was Le Journal des Savants, also available).

In general the Gallica interface is more robust and easier to use than those of the IMSS and BNCF, and all documents viewed can be downloaded, either in whole or in part, as high quality PDF files for off-line reading. Each document, be it a book, manuscript or journal volume is assigned a unique number, and once any item has been requested it will be displayed in a standardized browser window with menu options across the top, a panel with user-selectable contents on the left, and the document itself, in an area to the left.

Finding Documents on the Recherche (= Search) Page

To locate a book, click Recherche on the menu bar at the top the Gallica homepage. You will be redirected to a page with search boxes for entering the desired information, such as Title, Author, etc. The blue letters under Sujet give a glossary of possible subject headings (hint: searching on the subject Astronomie will yield an amazing, yet very incomplete, list of the works available related to the history of astronomy.) The free search can, to a limited extent, locate items (such as journal volumes) containing the search term in their table of contents. The radio buttons at the right allow you to limit the search to certain kinds of documents, while the links below them go to thematic pages listing a sampling of the library's digitized offerings in various categories. For example, clicking Periodiques, will give a list of all the available on-line Periodicals. If the journal you want is listed, click on its name and you will see a list of the available issues, then click on the desired volume to see its contents in a BNF document viewer window.

The meanings of the search boxes on the Gallica Recherche page should be self evident, but for those unfamiliar with French, are:

As explained in the notes below the search boxes, you can search for expressions by placing them between double quotation marks, and invoke stemmed search by placing an asterisk after the truncated term (e.g., entering astro*  to search for all words starting with astro).

As an example of using the Recherche page, enter Galileo in the Auteur box and click the Recherche (Search) button (the button labeled Effacer clears the search boxes). You will then see a list of all the digital holdings credited to Galileo, which, as you will see, includes all 20 volumes of the National Edition, plus many other works. At the left side of each entry representing a digitized volume are two buttons (if you see only a single button looking like a painting in a tiny picture frame, then the item listed is a set of pictures, rather than a book or journal). Clicking the lower button, which looks like a Rolodex card, gives the catalog entry, that is, a brief summary of the bibliographic information for the item. Clicking the upper button, picturing a little book, gives access to the item. Before clicking it, you can look in your browser's status bar (if it has one) to see the item number connected with your selection. For example, when you click on the book representing Volume 1 of Favaro's National Edition, you are executing the following link:

http://gallica.bnf.fr/document?O=N094893

Where N094893 is the BNF's number for this item. If you later request pages from this item to store for off-line viewing (as will be explained below), this number will form the first part of the default file name. The other volumes of the National Edition are similarly labeled, but not in strict sequence (slipped in between volumes 2 and 3, in the BNF numbering scheme, are three French translations of works by Benjamin Franklin and a treatise by Fresnel). For convenience, the following table gives links to the individual volumes (Volume 3, containing most of Galileo's astronomical observations, was published in two parts). Clicking on any of these links (constructed as shown above) should launch a normal Gallica document viewing window (see instructions in next section) for the indicated volume, just as if you had requested that volume from the catalog entry.

Links to Volumes of the National Edition at the BNF


1 2 3 3-Pt.2 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Note: links to Gallica may fail or behave unpredictably depending on your computer's cookie and proxy settings. Even if they fail, you should at least be able to see the relevant Gallica document number in your browser's status and/or address bar.

This copy of the National Edition differs from that at Galileo//Thek@ in that each volume is reproduced in facsimile form, exactly as it was printed (whereas Galileo//Thek@ has transcribed some sections into a machine readable form with separate figures). To go directly to a particular page, as will be explained more fully in the next section, simply click the link to the desired volume (you can use the table provided above), enter the desired page number in the box you will see labeled Aller Page, and click "Go". The requested page will be displayed. You can easily switch between volumes by changing the document number in your browser's address bar.

In addition to the usual volumes of the National Edition, the BNF has scanned a number of pamphlets or booklets related to it. These include a Esposizione e disegno a 23 page description issued by Favaro in 1888, Trent'anni di studi galileiani (30 Years of Galileo Studies) a 29 page pamphlet issued by Favaro in 1907, and a 41 page Prospectus to the 1929 reissue.

Returning to the Recherche page, if you have located a document using the Free Search option, at the start of each document listing, in addition to the Book and Rolodex icons previously described, you will see a little Magnifying Glass. Clicking on the magnifying glass will display the snippet of electronic text in which your search words were found.

Navigating Documents with the BNF Viewer

Near the top of the BNF document viewing page is a clickable list of headings in red type. The exact headings vary slightly depending on the content of the document. The function of these is:

Below these menu items are a row of clickable navigation buttons that move, in the usual fashion, forward or back a page, or to the start or end of the volume. Most importantly, there is a box labeled Aller Page for entering a desired page number. Clicking "Go" (next to the box) after entering a number will go directly to that page. Finally, to the right of this there may be a button labeled Aller Table des Matières. If present, when clicked, this will go directly to what the BNF digitizers believe to be the first page of the printed Table of Contents of the current volume.

The Pagination option is useful if you need to create a direct link to an unnumbered page in a Gallica document. Within a document, each page is assigned a unique image number, whether it has a printed page number or not. By pointing your mouse at any link in the Pagination panel, you can easily determine the exact number of the item you are about to retrieve. Both its document and image numbers will appear in the link displayed on your web browser's status line. Alternatively, on Windows version of Internet Explorer you can right-click on the button at ask for its properties (other browsers have similar capabilities). The page is actually retrieved by sending a request to that volume and page number to a server called "visualiseur.bnf.fr".

For example, the link:

http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=Gallica&O=NUMM-94893&I=40

will directly retrieve image 40 for document 94893 in the usual Gallica document viewing window. You can then go to adjacent images/pages using the normal Gallica navigation buttons, as explained above. However, if the printed page number is known (as is usually the case) it is easier, less confusing, and more reliable to retrieve the desired document, place the desired printed page number in the Aller Page box and click "GO".

Note: At times some of the menu buttons on a Gallica document viewing page may become non-functional. For example, after downloading a document, the Télécharger button may no longer be clickable. This problem can usually be corrected by using your browser's Refresh or Reload function.

Downloading Documents from Gallica

As explained in the previous section, download requests are initiated by clicking on the Télécharger menu item on any Gallica document viewing page. The download page opens in a new window. The radio buttons on this page allow you to request all or part of the currently viewed document in PDF or TIFF format. The buttons checked by default are:

  • 1ère page : start from first page of current volume
  • Jusqu'à la fin de l'ouvrage : include everything to the end of the current volume

This will download the entire document (which may be VERY large) in PDF format.

To download a portion of the current volume you must know the starting page and total number of pages you desire, and before clicking the Télécharger button you must go to the desired start page in the document viewing window. With the desired start page displayed, click Télécharger then check the following radio buttons:

  • Dernière page lue : start from the current page
  • Seulement xx page(s) : prepare a total of xx pages for download, where xx is a number you must supply

Click "OK", and for a few moments you will see a special page with a moving yellow dot saying that your requested download is being prepared. When it is ready, the page will indicate the number of pages prepared and the size of the document in octets (bytes). The easiest may to actually download the document is to use the light blue link, just below this that says: en cliquant ici ("click here"). This will open the prepared document in real time. Alternatively, you may wish to use your browser's Save target as... function to store the document for future viewing or printing (Windows users generally right-click on the link to invoke this browser function).

As explained previously, the default file name assigned to your download will consist of the Gallica document number followed by the range of image numbers. The image numbers, used internally by Gallica, usually differ slightly from the requested page numbers because, although there is generally one image per page, most documents contain un-numbered pages, causing the later image numbers to be larger than the printed page numbers.

In addition to the download link described in the previous paragraph, directions are given for obtaining your requested file by anonymous FTP, a pre-worldwide web method of file transfer. In recent versions of Internet Explorer on Windows computers, you can invoke this older method simply by pasting the indicated URL into the browser's address bar. However, clicking the download link seems easier.


Other On-line Resources Related to the History of Astronomy

The authors of the present website do not claim to be experts on digital libraries or their offerings. The following is a somewhat random list of websites providing access to facsimile copies of source material related to the history of astronomy. Given the number of libraries in the world and their common interest in making their collections more accessible, there are undoubtedly many others, and perhaps better ones, than those listed here. More complete lists can probably be found elsewhere on the internet. Margaret Anderson, on her Digital Librarian website, maintains one such extensive and up-to-date list of worldwide resources for those searching for original source materials in online form, although her emphasis is on the humanities. On his History of Astronomy website, Wolfgang Dick gives links to only three of the many on-line versions of Galileo's publications and manuscripts. None of the following sites have anywhere near the wealth of source material about early astronomy to be found at the IMSS and Gallica Digital libraries described above.


Galilean Telescope Homepage Site Map

Images on this page © IMSS & BNCF

Last modified: February 23, 2008