This was a pleasant surprise.
It turns out that Bill Gates was as fascinated by Richard Feynman as much as I and thousands of others have been, but a man of his resources took his fascination to another level: He bought the rights to the lectures so that they could be shared on the Internet with everyone.
For FREE.
PROJECT TUVA
The effort to publish these on the Internet for public access was called Project TUVA. You simply access a web site that is Silverlight driven & developed by Microsoft Research to enable the playback, and you’re on your way.
The Silverlight driven software provides subtitles, a realtime timeline, and reference links that point to “extras” that people can see.
One of the coolest features of the software is it’s ability to call up other web applications. For example, at the 39 &40 minute mark, the first lecture pulls up content from the Worldwide Telescope, a project Microsoft put together leveraging research Microsoft published at http://www.worldwidetelescope.com.
The first 4 minutes is hilarious… and that’s just Feynman’s introduction: ”I could tell you about the time he learned Spanish… in preparation for a trip to Brazil.”
BTW: If you find this interesting, if not entertaining, I’d encourage you to take a look at these books… my primers to the genius of Professor Feynman:
- Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) (Paperback)
- What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character (Paperback)
- The Very Best of the Feynman Lectures (Audio CD)
LINKS
- CNET: Bill Gates offers the world a physics lesson
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10286732-56.html - MICROSOFT RESEARCH: Project Tuva
http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/index.html - DOWNLOAD: Silverlight v3.0 (Required for Project Tuva)
http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/handlers/getsilverlight.ashx
kurtsh
Kurt Shintaku's Blog 