This looks like a lovely book, full of travel sketches and notes on flora and fauna found in uncharted places: Explorers’ Sketchbooks. “This remarkable book showcases 70 such sketchbooks, kept by intrepid men and women as they journeyed perilous and unknown environments—frozen wastelands, high mountains, barren deserts, and dense rainforests—with their senses wide open.” Available … Continue reading Explorers’ Sketchbooks
Most of my notebooks are ones that I’ve bought new and filled with my own notes and sketches. But I also occasionally succumb to my weakness for collecting other people’s used notebooks when I see them at flea markets or on eBay. Here’s a few that I’ve picked up along the way. This Rice-Stix notebook … Continue reading Vintage Notebooks from My Collection
I love stumbling on interesting antique notebooks like this! “Andrew Croswell (1778-1858) was a student at Harvard University in the late 1790s. He later studied medicine in Plymouth, MA, and practiced there and in Fayette and Mercer, ME. In the collections [at the Massachusetts Historical Society] we hold two notebooks that were kept by Croswell. … Continue reading Andrew Croswell’s 19th Century Notebooks
Moleskine has always been rather cagey about revealing the actual weight of their paper, unlike rival notebook makers such as Rhodia, Clairefontaine, Fabriano and many others who specify their paper weight in GSM (grams per square meter). GSM isn’t the only factor in how a paper performs, but it’s a good indicator, as thicker paper … Continue reading Moleskine Monday: Paper Weights Revealed!
Thanks to a tip from a reader named Raymond, I can share these images of a notebook that belonged to Albert Einstein: “Einstein’s search for general relativity spanned eight years, 1907-1915. …Â sometime between the late summer of 1912, when Einstein moved from Prague to Zurich, and early 1913. … [Einstein kept a notebook that was]Â found … Continue reading Einstein’s Notebook
A tantalizing glimpse of some Japanese notebooks dating back to World War II: “Long-forgotten documents on Japan’s attempt to build an atomic bomb during World War II have been discovered at Kyoto University, which experts say further confirms the secret program’s existence and could reveal the level of the research. The newly found items, dating … Continue reading WWII Japanese Notebooks
Did you ever wonder how someone came up with the design for the Microsoft Surface tablet? Apparently it started with these early concept sketches in Ralf Groene’s notebook: Read more at Microsoft’s Surface tablet started off life as this doodle in a sketchbook | The Verge
Catching up on some old links I’ve saved, here’s a nice wrap-up of some books featuring the pages of artists’, designers’, and scientists’ notebooks, including the one below from Field Notes on Science & Nature: “A typical notebook page detailing the thoughts and events of a day doing fieldwork at Olorgesailie, Kenya, with a personal … Continue reading A Paleontologist’s Field Notebook
Here’s something similar to the Grids and Guides notebook I posted about a few weeks ago. It’s called “Lineaturen” in German, which seems to translate to “line structures.” I spotted this notebook at the Centre Pompidou store and thought it was quite neat, not just as a notebook but as an exploration of the various … Continue reading Lineaturen Notebook
I stumbled across this in a bookshop and just loved it! Wish they would make a pocket sized version too! Grids and Guides: A Notebook for Visual Thinkers “Map out graphs, schematics, sketches, and dreams with this sleek and durable workbook. Inspired by vintage laboratory notebooks, Grids & Guides features 144 pages of graph paper … Continue reading Grids and Guides Notebook