Engraved Illustrations of Various Castles and Fortified Structures

The Medieval Castle That Pranked Its Visitors

At Hesdin, in France, the idyllic beauty of the grounds met the sadistic slapstick of the castle’s “engines of amusement.”
a Book of the Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices by al-Jazari

The Marvelous Automata of Antiquity

Centuries before the computer, whimsical automata pushed the uncanny boundary between human and machine.
Pages from the Voynich Manuscript

The Voynich Manuscript: Crowd-Sourcing An Uncrackable Cipher

The Voynich Manuscript has mesmerized people ever since the man it's named after, bibliophile Wilfred Voynich, brought it up for sale in 1912.