The Wisdom of the Ages on CD-ROM

As the first guy to put the sun at the center of the solar system, astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus was a revolutionary, and he lived just long enough to see his observations bound in a hand-lettered book.

Now a Palo Alto company is using state-of-the-art technology to preserve such ancient and rare books on CD-ROM, and sell them in the electronic marketplace for about the price of a hardback. Doing so makes treasures that would usually only be accessible to those who could visit them in museums or climate-controlled vaults available to the masses.

By this weekend, Copernicus’ “On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres” will join more than a dozen other rare titles, from Benjamin Franklin to Galileo, Shakespeare and Newton,that are sold through Octavo Corp.’s Web site (https://www.octavo.com).

The fledgling company, founded by two partners who specialize in new media and love old books, uses specially built digital cameras to photograph works and transfer them to CD-ROM.

“It’s like taking the Hubble telescope down onto a book, and you get to see all the beauty and treasure of it,” said Patrick Ames, chief executive and publisher of Octavo. The ancient pages can be turned and read, and the text--in the case of Galileo, in Latin--is translated into English. The first compiled plays of Shakespeare, printed in 1623, will be available in the fall, he said.