In the Spring, the CEO of GoDaddy upset a lot of people when he went on an elephant hunting trip. This reaction would have seemed pretty strange to the public back in 1871, when Queen Victoria’s second son Prince Alfred went on a 5 week long trip through Ceylon (aka Sri Lanka).
This trip was documented in the book The Duke Of Edinburgh In Ceylon. A Book of Elephant and Elk Sport, and according to a review in Nature at the time, “It appeals to two sections of the public, those who eagerly seize upon every incident connected with the mode of life of any member of our Royal family, and those who are equally eager after any description from life of sport in those countries where wild beasts worthy of a hunter’s rifle abound.”
I know all this because the The British Library has released an absolutely fantastic free iPad app with 1000 books from their 19th Century Collection.
The scanning quality of these books is just amazing, and they have full color illustrations as well.
(Watch out, elephant!).
This is honestly one of the most fascinating apps that I have on my iPad, with subjects like Geograhphy, Geology, History, Poetry, 18th & 19th Century novels, and the list goes on.
(I’m pretty sure my son didn’t learn about circumference in Kindergarten this year)
I can’t say enough good things about this app, so check it out if you are into this sort of thing. It’s one of the coolest scanning projects I have come across.
via TUAW