A to Z - Objectivity 39 

The depth of knowledge acquired by librarians is beyond the comprehension of most of us.

What about the oldest and the newest items in the collection?

"No, usually people are interested in particular things." Such a great burn from Keith.

I wish Mr Moore good luck in his search for the middle card.

Can you look up an item which has not been consulted for a long long time? Which item has been collecting dust for the longest, without anyone taking a look at it? There must be many items which nobody has looked at for >100 years, right?

Woohoo, my comment was blurred out in this video!! I'm internet famous now!

My ears pricked up when I heard the name "Solander". The Australian Institute of Marine Science has a research vessel called RV Solander. No doubt named after this man.

As the original requester of the first and last card and as a Dutch viewer. Thank you very much for doing to video. I think both are pretty interesting items but I have to agree that the second one is the more interesting one. It really surprised me that the first item was actually a Dutch item while I am also from the Netherlands. What are the odds of that happening (Numberphile give me the answer I know you can do it).

Why not do A to Z (as opposed to A and Z as presented here) as a longer project, i.e. the first (and possible also last) entry for every letter?

The downs is an area of sea of the coast of Kent by the town of deal Frequently mentioned in Pepys diary where it was used as an anchorage for the navy, (maybe an episode on Sam Pepys?)

I'm a viewer from the Netherlands, and i liked the letter from mr van der Aa, But I would like to see something from one of the greatest Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens. That would be really great ;-)

Eerie and beautiful, looking at the workings of scientists long gone. And what a beautiful voice Keith has.

Is there a Keith's Fan Club already?

I just watched Keith briefly appear in an American PBS/NOVA documentary about Benjamin Franklin and balloons! Brady - please make Keith an object in your series and give us his story! Keep up the great work!

These guys, especially Brady, are more special to me than most people I have met.

4:08 - Apparently calling something "a thing" in that context predates the Internet by a long, long time

I just discovered this channel a few days ago and I've been watching then in order from #1. If I had known as a boy than being a librarian could be so exciting then my life might have went a different way. As an avid reader and science nerd I knew library were exciting of course but librarian seemed similar to clerks to my younger self. Nothing against clerks but not many kids dream of becoming one.

That last record of wind charts and predictions reminds me of the old still out there weather broadcasts , that they also used for british spies during the ww2 days

As a Dutch viewer: thank you very much! :)

love this channel and periodic videos =) Brady keep up doing these. They will catch like wildfire. Keith you're an excellent contributor to the growth of this channel as well, Many thanks to the both of you.

The bottom section of the letter is talking about 'cholica pictorum', or painters colic from lead poisoning and why its more common. Could be something toward drinking vessels and production of drinks being contaminated with lead which was common at that time.

I looked into the minutes of the Dutch Society , they are scanned and accessible online. The Society wants to know a better use of the area between the sand beach and the dunes (fore downs) and the rough area behind the dunes (this part is "within" the protection of the dunes). This is the area where the F1 circuit Zandvoort is located, about 6 km from the current office of the Society.

You could also map each drawer to a number and use that system to get a specific card. So for something to do with pi you'd take the 3rd drawer first card, or the the drawer in the third row and first column and then take the first card, or the 31st drawer 4th card. There should be many ways of mapping the catalog to numbers, but you get the basic idea of it. (Maybe do something with the Brady series discovered on numberphile...)

The 1st card of the catalog is owned by the person whose last name is the 1st 2 letters of the name of the brother of the "legal author."

Very pleased to have these wonderful videos gentlemen:) Have there been many Canadian members of the Royal Society? Such brilliance must carry over to the new world...

Great video. I am a chuffed Canadian! Who would have thought it? Brilliant. You could iterate through every object in the collection, ideally in chronological order (probably need to go to the computer for that).

I want to see a .gif of Brady waiting.

Hooray to Keith for suggesting the middle catalog entry!

Wow, that person put in a lot of work into the wind research.

I'd watch keith talk about basically anything for hours

I wonder if the Royal Society has any artifacts or documents produced by John Harrison, the famous clock maker? I've been a big fan of Harrison ever since I read Longitude by Dava Sobel. Thumbs up on another great video! Brady, thanks so much for providing so much awesome content!!!

This is great! The Wind chart was awesome!

I really loved to see something about discovering electronic parts or some really early circuits

looking forward to the middle card. Sea-Downs are most likely dunes, which makes sense because of the location of Haarlem and the rest of the text

Best video since beginning!

Now you should do the first and last entries by date

In Denmark Aa would be last, as it is an alternative to the letter å (the capital letter being Å). Though I would suspect that you would realise that it wasn't an Å, as it's another language, and put it first.

So was that first letter written by the black beast of Argh? When Brady said "Aa" it reminded me of classic Monty Python and the Holy Grail and the Knights trying to pronounce argh... Lol!

Keith has some good ideas

@roeland007 thanks for that great suggestion.

Keith is the top man...what a gent..Your a lucky man Brady

White Gloves of Predictability

It's interesting that it was signed as Harlem, as the dutch now spell it Haarlem, and perhaps the "sea downs" in question are now the Nationaal Park Zuid-Kennemerland?? or just the dunes at Oranjekom...

as halloween is coming, are there any spooohoooky objects?

Could you maybe show some stuff from the early stages of railway history? Are there any artifacts from Stephenson, Trevithick and the like?

1:23. Brady doesn't care what time it is, he just likes to admire his "Amiga", and think of the cogs and wheels while thinking of all the silly people walking around with digital watches with analog watch faces on their wrists.

Do one of something that happened on yours and/or Keith's birthday.

i like these videos

What was the answer that van der Aa got?

Keith's voice

I would like to see the earliest and latest entries.

1:26 Still angling for that slow watch ambassador role Brady?

Now make a numberphile video about different ways to tackle the problem of finding the exact middle of a gigantic catalogue whose exact number of elements are not precisely known ...

What are the largest and smallest items in the collection (whether by mass, volume, area, word/page count, etc.)?

Why doesn't the royal society have digital archives of the documents to reduce the chance of the originals getting damaged?

Any normal researcher would sit there waiting, while surfing on their iPhone, iPad and laptop. Probably simultaneously.

The unit exactly in the middle starts with either MY or NA.

"It's not like the most amazing thing we've ever seen, but it could have been worse." - Netherlands in a nutshell right there. :D

Does the royal society hold any digital information? IE personal journals or personal emails of modern scientists. It would be an interesting to know. Thanks brady

Is Eustachius Zwerak the inventor of the Eustachian tube?

make a numberphile video about generating random numbers and then use that method to generate a random card to look at

Holland represent!

What's the first mention of artificial satellites at the Royal society?

How about checking to see what there is under "Haran" and "Hennessy"?

How are those files organized that the first item is found in the middle of the book?

That wasn't the "last drawer" as the submitter asked, and I have seen you access a drawer in the last column, right, and therefore later than the 'z' drawer you accessed.

Brady is 'Hard as Nails'

Dear Brady, How long in reality did it take to wait for Keith to return with the materials?

Weird, my comment got censored for some reason so lets try it again without the urls... "The Downs are a roadstead* in the North Sea near the English Channel off the coast of Kent, between North and South Foreland in Southern England". "In 1639 the Battle of the Downs took place here, when the Dutch navy destroyed a Spanish fleet which had sought refuge in neutral English waters. The presence of Downs helped to make Deal one of the busiest ports in England". * "A roadstead is a body of water sheltered from rip currents, spring tides or ocean swells outside a harbor where ships can lie reasonably safely at anchor without dragging or snatching while waiting for their turn to enter a port of call*". * "A port of call is an intermediate stop for a ship on its sailing route". Sources: /wiki/the_downs /wiki/deal,_kent /wiki/roadstead /wiki/port_of_call merriam-webster

So... What is the item listed exactly in the middle?

Have you done a video on the oldest item in the archives? Is it possible to figure out which item is the oldest?

Zed's dead, baby. Zed's dead.

Try to find the shortest title and the longest title; smallest item or largest item.

Do they in the Royal Society have anything under non-English letters? Or is it too British?

What is the oldest thing that the royal society has?

Look for "Rohan"

I am late to this series, but curious about the gloves. You used them to remove cards from the card catalog, but took them off to touch the object. Are they not meant to keep skin oils and dirt off the object?

I bet you didn't notice any difference in your slow watch when you looked at it at 1:26 :p

Cant we do the white-gloves of destiny but on the computerized database instead ?? I'd like to see how that works too

Within the first 10 seconds I swear you say dick twice. "Lucky Dick" is my favorite of them.

#KeithRocks

yay dutch represent XD

upset at the lack of pun. That last item was interesting but a bit long winded. opportunity missed :(

Osphena commercial? Okay...I am a dude.

the special one is facing sanctions from the FA for speaking out of term, as he does, so I'd be glad not to be him.

KEITH! KEITH! KEITH! YES LAD. CHEEKY BEERS AT SPOONS WITH KEITH! WHAT A GEEZA