The Library of the Nautilus: can you fit 12,000 books inside?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ต.ค. 2024
- In 'Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea', Jules Verne describes the Nautilus’s library as containing twelve thousand books. How much space would twelve thousand volumes take up, and do the dimensions offered by Verne accommodate such space? In this video, we shall find out.
Music: 'No. 7 Alone with My Thoughts', by Esther Abrami (TH-cam Music Library).
#julesverne #culture #maths
Perhaps some shelves were double depth? Would only work for reference series books, but it would work...
Nemo, genius that he was, perfected a way of miniaturizing books. Perhaps he re-transcribed them all in his new, smaller format.
Alternately, Nemo, liar that he is, never counted his books and just made up a number that would sound impressive to the professor.
Or both. Both is good.
To be fair, there are a few categories from the Dewey Decimal System that is missing in Nemo's library, namely political science and philosophy...
An entire library of 12,000 books can now fit on a thumb drive the size of a finger nail.
Not much use by itself.
I remember doing similar math when working on a possible arrangement for the Nautilus myself. I think, one of the things you can count on is that books that consists only of text need not be that large. While technically "pocket editions" are a recent publishing innovation, miniature books have been produced with movable type since the 1600s. So a great number of the texts may only be slightly larger than a modern bestselling paperback. There would be some books he wouldn't be able to reduce, so oversized books might require some specialized spaces. I envisioned that the divans themselves could hold some tomes, particularly in the case of oversized books. One of the problems of fitting any rectangular space in what is a cylindrical volume is that you can loose space on top or bottom. This may allow for shelves that have extra depth at the middle heights perhaps allowing for book drawers as opposed to shelving. In the end I also came to the conclusion that regardless of the illustrations, the library must be a two storied affair. It perhaps doesn't feel as monumental because the catwalks on the upper level would make the lower level somewhat more closed on. It's definitely a feeling I got in a small town library that dated to the late 19th century and was indeed fitted with steel catwalks to access the upper shelving in a nominally 2 story space (and warnings of maximum occupancy).
to me the "Uniformly bound" could also suggest that they might be custom editions specifically designed for and ordered for this library, where they could be printed much smaller than standard.
The fact that the books were uniformly bound is interesting. It suggests to me that perhaps the good Captain had reprints made of all the books so that they could fit comfortably on his library shelves aboard ship. Perhaps establishing a printing house for this purpose, or hiring one to make his uniform books. My wife has a set of old Nancy Drew mystery stories that are quite compact, and I've seen Bibles printed to be quite compact as well. If you could manage your own printing, you might use appropriate small fonts and book design to shrink the volumes. You might use thin metal shelving as opposed to wood, you might make choices specific to a submarine that cause non-standard values for the books, the shelves, or any part of the room.
A very faur point. Nearly every part of the Nautilus would have needed to be custom biult anyway, so special order reprints are hardly a step to far.
Not that the book describes the library this way (I found the relevant passage online to verify), but you could significantly increase the capacity with rolling double-sided shelves on tracks.
No reason why the upper walkway can't be a hallway around the room with books on both sides. I'm not sure I'm describing it very well. Instead of the upper walkway just having a railing around it it could have bookshelves around it. So when you're on the walkway you'd have bookshelves on your right and left. These inner bookshelves could in turn have bookshelves on their back facing into the room. These books could be reached by ladder. ... Although I guess the ladder would have to sit on the table?
That is almost enough room for all the Jack Reacher books.
Or the Destroyer Novels ?
Error in the thumbnail picture: "Scan you fit"
well, its a video that uses information from (hypothetical) scans (of the book) to be more detailed and accurate, which is a thing they do with comic battles (which also tend to go into details like this), so it kinda sorta works? Pretty big stretch, and I'm also kinda messing around, looking for a justification. Whatever.
I kind of wonder if the library space is actually subdivided, with a lower section for reading, and an upper section for storage. Doing this would result in the ceiling being lower, and thus why the narration does not show surprise at the size of the room. It would also allow for a higher storage density for the books. The storage section could be accessed via a retractable ladder and hatch that is normally hidden, or maybe some kind of automated system that retrieves books via mechanical means. I think a punch card based interface would work well for this. I think the books in the main library would be the favorites and/or the most frequently used, while less frequently used ones are in storage.
On the other hand Nemo may just be exaggerating.
Perhaps all the books were in an alphabet with a significantly higher information density than Latin, such as Chinese or even Japanese.
I'm very intrigued by your work. Keep up the awesome.
love the questions that pop up in your brain, and your videos examining them
If you want to know the exact size of a book, presuming it's cataloged according to professional AACR, AACR2, or RDA standards, you can download a the 300 field. The size is in subfield c.
Microfiche?
I'm curious about the size of the electric piles as originally described by Verne, given the speed, range, and endurance of the Nautilus in the book
To answer you question maybe the shelves are on rails and move to cover the books a bit like the way a moving mounted library step ladder moves side to side this enables a degree of "double stack shelves" and recovers some of the space.
Alternatively things like Encyclopedias and other Multi-volume works could have the lower easily reachable shelves double stacked deep so if you had a 20 volume encyclopedia say. On the shelf you would see volume 1 to 10.
If you took out book # 1 then Book volume #11 would be behind it. If you took out Book number 10 #20 would be behind it.
If this was done up to say 1.2 Metres then it would be mostly reachable without a ladder or catwalk and a ladder of catwalk would access the single stack upper tiers instead.
Oh and yes I have a fair few 19th century books and they do vary in size a bit. and can be smaller but they can also be less tall and wider too. they are not as uniform overall as a modern Paperback... but it does vary and also someone times the book is bigger but the typesetting isn't.
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Speaking of a century + ago did you think to look at the Oz novels they are quite different to the media & do have some technical stuff in them too (a darn sight funnier for a start). Especially the one with Jack Pumpkin head in.
The old Cartoon of the Oz series is perhaps "better" than the books though (overall). Interesting show too considering it was a show that had a female protagonist but wasn't seen as a girl's franchise.. (they often replace the male protagonist of the later novel with Dorothy when they translate it to other media though which is a same as they banter in that book is hilarious).
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These Nautilus Videos are giving me Seaquest DSV & Voyager to the Bottom of the sea flashbacks as well ( I wonder if the flying sub fits in the show's Main hero Submarine "Seaview" too incidentally).
Scan you fit? (Thumbnail)
How much of it was porn? Sorry, had to ask.
Seems the Nautilus needed to be larger then described. A submerged library.
cool💯👍