Benjamin B . Olshin

Although the engineering drawings of Leonardo da Vinci are well known, they are not necessarily well understood. Leonardo used the pages of his notebooks as a method of "visual thinking," to investigate and work out problems in everything from mechanics to hydraulics. Leonardo used this same method to investigate the possibility-or impossibility-of perpetual motion. In many of the folio pages, we find pictures and text dealing with a range of designs for perpetual motion machines powered by weights or water. This paper examines Leonardo's investigations of the belief in perpetual motion, a belief that already had a long history by the time he began his studies. In addition, this paper allows us to recreate a typology of his renderings of different kinds of perpetual motion machines-that is, a classification scheme according to the various mechanical elements that he posited or analyzed, and motive forces employed. Finally, this paper reveals that Leonardo carried out his investigations in a detailed and systematic, if at times episodic, manner over a period of years. It also argues that he used his folio drawings to both depict perpetual motion devices and to articulate the problems and impossibilities that such schemes presented.

"Lost Knowledge: The Concept of Vanished Technologies and Other Human Histories" examines the idea of lost knowledge, reaching back to a period between myth and history. It investigates a peculiar idea found in a number of early texts: that there were civilizations with knowledge of sophisticated technologies, and that this knowledge was obscured or destroyed over time along with the civilization that had created it. This book presents critical studies of a series of early Chinese, South Asian, and other texts that look at the idea of specific “lost” technologies, such as mechanical flight and the transmission of images. There is also an examination of why concepts of a vanished “golden age” were prevalent in so many cultures. Offering an engaging and investigative look at the propagation of history and myth in technology and culture, this book is sure to interest historians and readers from many backgrounds.

In "Deciphering Reality: Simulations, Tests, and Designs", Benjamin B. Olshin takes a problem-based approach to the question of the nature of reality. In a series of essays, the book examines the detection of computer simulations from the inside, wrestles with the problem of visual models of reality, explores Daoist conceptions of reality, and offers possible future directions for deciphering reality. The ultimate goal of the book is to provide a more accessible approach, unlike highly complex philosophical works on metaphysics, which are inaccessible to non-academic readers, and overly abstract (and at times, highly speculative) popular works that offer a mélange of physics, philosophy, and consciousness. All those interested in metaphysics, philosophy, comparative (Eastern / Western) philosophy, philosophy of science, history of science, physics, computer simulations, and the question of illusion and reality.

In the thirteenth century, Italian merchant and explorer Marco Polo traveled from Venice to the far reaches of Asia, a journey he chronicled in a narrative titled Il Milione, later known as The Travels of Marco Polo. While Polo’s writings would go on to inspire the likes of Christopher Columbus, scholars have long debated their veracity. Some have argued that Polo never even reached China, while others believe that he came as far as the Americas. Now, there’s new evidence for this historical puzzle: a very curious collection of fourteen little-known maps and related documents said to have belonged to the family of Marco Polo himself.

In The Mysteries of the Marco Polo Maps, historian of cartography Benjamin B. Olshin offers the first credible book-length analysis of these artifacts, charting their course from obscure origins in the private collection of Italian-American immigrant Marcian Rossi in the 1930s; to investigations of their authenticity by the Library of Congress, J. Edgar Hoover, and the FBI; to the work of the late cartographic scholar Leo Bagrow; to Olshin’s own efforts to track down and study the Rossi maps, all but one of which are in the possession of Rossi’s great-grandson Jeffrey Pendergraft. Are the maps forgeries, facsimiles, or modernized copies? Did Marco Polo’s daughters—whose names appear on several of the artifacts—preserve in them geographic information about Asia first recorded by their father? Or did they inherit maps created by him? Did Marco Polo entrust the maps to Admiral Ruggero Sanseverino, who has links to Rossi’s family line? Or, if the maps have no connection to Marco Polo, who made them, when, and why?