Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: It's me Christian Seger. Sometimes I like to imagine that
Speaker 1: long after I'm dead, a wealthy philanthropist is going to
Speaker 1: buy my diary for millions of dollars and lend it
Speaker 1: to museums across the planet. Then everyone would finally know
Speaker 1: the answer to today's question, what is the most expensive
Speaker 1: book in the world? Something by William Shakespeare, the Necronomicon,
Speaker 1: Twilight New Moon. Well, it all depends on if the
Speaker 1: book is printed or if it's handwritten. If we're talking
Speaker 1: books that have had multiple copies printed, then the answer
Speaker 1: is the Bay Psalm Book, which sold for more than
Speaker 1: fourteen million dollars in November. It was originally printed by
Speaker 1: Puritans in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in sixteen forty. Seeking religious freedom,
Speaker 1: these settlers wanted their own translation of the Old Testament. Today,
Speaker 1: there are only eleven copies remaining, and it is considered
Speaker 1: the first book printed in America. But if we include
Speaker 1: one of a kind handwritten texts, then the base Som
Speaker 1: book isn't even worth half the value of the most
Speaker 1: expensive book ever sold. That title goes to Leonardo da
Speaker 1: Vinci's Codex Lester, which sold for thirty point eight million
Speaker 1: dollars in nine to a little known computer programmer by
Speaker 1: the name of Bill Gates. Adjust that amount for inflation,
Speaker 1: and today the Codex is almost worth fifty million dollars.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's forty million, five thousand, five hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty one dollar and forty cents if you want to
Speaker 1: be technical. It's an unbound, seventy two page notebook filled
Speaker 1: with da Vinci's drawings and thoughts, mainly about how to
Speaker 1: move water. Yeah, the most expensive book in the world
Speaker 1: is basically a plumbing manual. More on that in a minute.
Speaker 1: A lot of da Vinci's writing was lost to history,
Speaker 1: almost half of it, in fact, So the Codex Lester
Speaker 1: is mainly important because it's a single collection of his
Speaker 1: focused ideas. The Codex is written, like many of da
Speaker 1: Vinci's works, in something called mirror hand. All the letters
Speaker 1: are reversed and it's written from right to left, so
Speaker 1: the only way you can read it is when it's
Speaker 1: held up to a mirror, and you probably need a
Speaker 1: fluency and antiquated Italian as well. So it's a book
Speaker 1: about water that's written backwards. Well, to be fair, that's
Speaker 1: oversimplifying things a bit. It's primarily about how astronomy and
Speaker 1: geology relate to water, considering the functionality of tides, eddies,
Speaker 1: and dams. Really, da Vinci was trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to harness the power of moving water. He demonstrates
Speaker 1: how pressure increases with depth in a fluid, and the
Speaker 1: Codex examines configurations of siphons and differently shaped pipes. He's
Speaker 1: particularly interested in the fluid mechanics of how water moves
Speaker 1: around obstacles. This manuscript was first purchased in seventeen seventeen
Speaker 1: by a guy named Thomas Coke, who later became the
Speaker 1: Earl of Leicester, hence the title Codex Lester. But in
Speaker 1: night an art collector named armand Hammer bought it, changing
Speaker 1: its name to the more badass Codex Hammer. This only
Speaker 1: lasted fourteen years, though, until Gates bought it and changed
Speaker 1: it back. Then he made it into a screensaver for windows. Actually,
Speaker 1: Gates seems genuinely inspired by da Vinci's example of pushing
Speaker 1: himself to find more knowledge. He's even loaned the book
Speaker 1: to a number of museums over the years so it
Speaker 1: can be viewed and studied by the public. So that's
Speaker 1: the most expensive book in the world for now, until
Speaker 1: the Codex Sager hits the Southebys auction block. Check out
Speaker 1: the brainstuff channel on YouTube, and for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.