Books and Devices from the Old -Their Renaissance in Computer Graphics

Abstract

In the following we present three of our institute’s activities concerning cultural heritage. First we present a reconstruction of the Antikythera Mechanism, which is the world’s oldest calculator of astronomical purpose. The implementation extensively uses engines and sensors from the OpenInventor Graphics Library. This is a particularly interesting example of a delicate object which cannot be exhibited (without the use of a virtual Computer Graphics model) since it is too valuable and delicate. Secondly we illustrate the use of Computer Graphics to make valuable medieval books available to the public. A new texture mapping approach, allows the bilinear interpolation of texture coordinates on an arbitrary triangle mesh. This approach uses projective texture mapping and can therefore utilize the hardware of modern graphic workstations. Lastly we present an application of modern 3D Computer Graphics in the field of reconstructing ancient scientific instruments. The first-four-species calculator of Wilhelm Schickard is made accessible to the public in the World Wide Web using Java3D. All three examples illustrate the use of latest technology to model ancient books or devices.