Take a walk 'around the world's mind' as 600-year-old collection is revealed for the first time

Lines of Thought offers a virtual preview in which several pieces can be viewed from the comfort of your home.

For the first time a new exhibit will display historic pieces that have changed the world forever.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The Cambridge University Library has kept several pieces of never-before-seen collections buried in its deepest, darkest tombs and, for the first time, it is ready to reveal history-altering pieces.

Cambridge librarian Anne Jarvis explained: "What started in 1416 as a small collection of manuscripts locked in wooden chests, has now grown into a global institution housing eight million books and manuscripts, billions of words, and millions of images, all communicating thousands of years of human thought."

The exhibit, titled Lines of Thought: Discoveries that Changed the World, is free to attend between Friday, March 11 through September 30 this year. There is also a digital tour available for free online.

The exhibit boasts 4,000 years of recorded thought, seventy percent of which will be displayed to the public for the very first time.
Some of the items to be displayed include:

• Edmund Halley's handwritten notebook/sketches of Halley's Comet (1682)
• Stephen Hawking's draft typescript of A Brief History of Time
• Darwin's first pencil sketch of Species Theory and his Primate Tree
• A 2nd century AD fragment of Homer's Odyssey
• The Nash Papyrus - a 2,000-year-old copy of the Ten Commandments
• The Gutenberg Bible - the earliest substantive printed book in Western Europe (1455)
• The Book of Deer, 10th century gospel book: thought to be the oldest Scottish book and the first example of written Gaelic

There are 6 Lines of Thought at the exhibition, each focusing on deeply impactful moments in history. The Lines are:

• From clay tablets to Twitter feed (Revolutions in human communication)
• The evolution of genetics (From Darwin to DNA)
• Beginning with the word (Communicating faith)
• On the shoulders of giants (Understanding gravity)
• Eternal lines (Telling the story of history)
• Illustrating anatomy (Understanding the body).

Jarvis described the "spectacular exhibition" as one that has "been critical in shaping the world and culture we know today, illustrating the myriad lines of thought that take us back into the past, and forward to tomorrow's research, innovation and literature."

The Cambridge Library is older than the Vatican Library, contains over 125 miles of shelving and boasts more than two million books available to readers. As the largest open-access library in Europe, the Cambridge University Library will be celebrating its 600th anniversary by choosing one iconic item from each theme to be digitized and made available with a free iPad app to be read cover-to-cover.

With the plethora of knowledge now available, make time to tour the exhibition this year and learn about the world's history, peek into the greatest minds the world has ever seen and engage in what may prove to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

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