The most expensive book in the world

Books may be priceless if we take into consideration their instructive value; however, almost everything in this world comes with a price tag. Knowledge is a valuable element which implies some costs. Everybody interested in their educational path is aware of the importance of a book and doesn’t skimp when it comes to buying one. Bill Gates may be the best example; in 1994, he bought Codex Leicester, the manuscript of Leonardo Da Vinci written in 1508, for $30.800.000, making it the most expensive book in the world. This is a scientific journal of 72 pages that contains theories and drawings about water and its movements, astronomy and fossils. Nevertheless, Bill Gates didn’t keep it for himself, so he had it displayed in several institutions and he even scanned it for making some of the pages a screensaver for Microsoft Plus of Windows 95.

When he was asked about the reason he bought this book, he said:  “I feel very lucky that I own a notebook. In fact, I remember going home one night and telling my wife Melinda that I was going to buy a notebook; she didn’t think that was a very big deal. I said, no, this is a pretty special notebook, this is the Codex Leicester, one of the Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. And I personally have always been amazed by him because he personally worked out science on his own, and he understood things that no other scientist of that time did. And his work is amazing. He would work by drawing things and writing down his ideas. So he built these notebooks about how light worked, how water worked, how weapons would work. Of course he designed all sorts of flying machines, like helicopters, way before you could actually build something like that. So every one of these notebooks are amazing documents – they’re kind of his rough-draft notes of texts that he eventually wanted to put together.”

by Cristina Maria Tanase