Feynman "Messenger" lectures now available online
July 15, 2009 | 3:35 pm
Project Tuva makes Feynman's Messenger Series available to the public.
A set of seven talks by legendary, Nobel-winning physicist Richard Feynman is now available online, free of charge–and through a much more versatile application than YouTube.
Microsoft Research has made videos of the famous Messenger Series lectures available through an interactive video application called Project Tuva.
Feynman expanded our understanding of quantum electrodynamics, assisted in the development of the atomic bomb and helped explain the Challenger disaster. But Feynman is also famous for his uncanny ability to convey to others the wonder of science.
Project Tuva gives modern viewers an experience the Cornell University students who originally heard them never had.
The site allows the user to watch Feynman with subtitles; to take notes that link to specific points in the video timeline and video transcript; and to access expert commentary, bibliographic references and Web links, all also linked to points on the video timeline. The user can search the transcript for keywords and then click on those words to watch that section of the video. However, the multimedia presentation can only be viewed using Microsoft’s Silverlight technology.
Bill Gates says in an introduction on the Project Tuva Web site that he has been hoping to share the Feynman lectures with the world for 20 years.
“I think these Messenger Series lectures [Feynman] gives are the best science lectures I’ve ever seen,” he says.
“I think someone who can make science interesting is magical. And the person who did that better than anybody was Richard Feynman. He took the mystery of science, the importance of science, the strangeness of science, and made it fun and interesting and approachable.”
We reported in symmetry breaking on June 22 that the head of Microsoft had purchased the rights to Feynman’s Messenger Series lectures from the BBC.
Gates said he planned to make the talks public. But he had something even farther-reaching in mind.
Microsoft promises to add more educational videos to the site in the future, writing that “the Feynman videos are just the tip of the iceberg.”
Now if only the program could let you raise your hand and ask Prof. Feynman a question.
Kathryn Grim
Posted in Uncategorized |
13 Comments »
July 15th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
>> However, the multimedia presentation can only be viewed in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer using their Silverlight technology.
Wrong — Silverlight works fine in Firefox and Safari on OSX, and apparently others as well. Also, there is apparently a free(speech) implementation of Silverlight known as Moonlight, but I haven’t tried that yet.
July 17th, 2009 at 1:39 am
It’s not true that it can only be viewed in IE, I used Firefox and it works just fine. The lectures are quite a treasure!
July 18th, 2009 at 6:45 am
It’s pretty ignorant of the author to think that Silverlight only works in IE.
I just watched the first lecture in Safari on a Mac.
July 20th, 2009 at 9:12 am
Thanks for pointing this out!
July 20th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Editor’s note: We corrected the sentence in the article.
July 22nd, 2009 at 3:19 am
‘Much more versatile’ – how wrong!
It doesn’t continue caching video when you pause, thereby not allowing people with not enough bandwidth to watch the videos.
Also you can’t save them to let others watch it without having to redownload the videos through the site, and losing bandwidth for everyone.
If Bill Gates wanted to share these with everyone as readily as possible, surely this would be a prime option!
Not everyone has the bandwidth and data-limits to watch all these videos!
And in full screen, there is no timeline bar to adjust!
I took a long time to release that you can drag the timeline bar to a particular spot, for a long time I thought you could only click to a particular chapter.
Very non-intuitive and mostly backwards stuff from microsoft, I think.
July 27th, 2009 at 4:48 am
Silverlight does not work on GNU/Linux, and website does not work with the free implementation (Moonlight). So all GNU/Linux users cannot access those videos. There are open video formats, yet MS chooses to release these videos in a closed format that does not work for everybody. This is hardly “releasing to the public”.
Plus, these lectures used to be available in YouTube. Not any more: they have been “removed by the user”.
So the lectures were available for everyone (in YouTube) until Mr. Gates decided to “make them available to everyone”. This is insulting.
August 20th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
I can’t tell if this is an advertisement for microsoft or an article.
August 22nd, 2009 at 7:12 pm
I’m running the latest Safari on the latest OSX on an Intel iMac, and Mr. Gates’ software tells me I need the latest version of SilverLight, downloads it for me, installs it for me, then tells me “You need the latest version of SilverLight.”
Typical.
October 31st, 2009 at 3:56 pm
As I refuse to use any Microsoft software, Mr. Gates has just effectively taken these lectures out of my reach.
Shame on the BBC for allowing this incredibly valuable resource to be put behind a wall of proprietary software.
January 20th, 2010 at 7:20 pm
When I try to view the videos, I get this message. “Sorry, Silverlight for your browser is not officially supported.” I’m using Firefox on a Linux system.
May 22nd, 2010 at 7:10 pm
Thanks a lot for the great lectures of Feynman! It is a real pleasure to listen to him. He was a great man and scientist, who should not be forgotten. The goal to make science understandable for everyone is great. The first step to reach that is done by offering knowldedge as you have done it. So I just have one thing to say: Fine done and thanks a lot, Mr. Gates!
June 9th, 2010 at 11:33 pm
I have always been a fan of Feynman ,however I am mighty annoyed that silverlight will not workon amd athlon and since I cannot afford to upgrade my pc at moment I still have not seen the lectures ,please make them avalable in a different format too ,for all the poor people like me