Re: The concentric rings on f57v...?

[Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

    > [Nick Pelling:] On the monochrome image I'm looking at of f57v
    > (the page with the four concentric rings), there are four
    > straight lines emerging roughly from the centre: .... does it
    > look like those four lines were part of the original page
    > design?

Those lines were penciled in Friedman's photocopies, and are not 
present in Beinecke's own image:
http://highway49.library.yale.edu/PHOTONEG/zoom/z361/z3610554.jpg
http://highway49.library.yale.edu/Scripts/db2www.exe/PHOTONEG.d2w/INPUT

As Dana pointed out, the manuscript itself apparently has four
separate strokes, one across each text ring, only at the 10:30
position. Some of those strokes were doubled. I cannot see any trace
of such strokes at the other three diagonal directions.

Similar "start here" strokes can be seen in some text rings
of other diagrams, almost always between 09:00 and 12:00.

    > [Dana Scott:]  It strikes me here that if the circles themselves 
    > can be drawn so precisely
    
The circles on this page are quite good, and may have been drawn with
a compass. (There is a central dot which could be where the compass
was anchored, except that it seems to be a little off center.)

However, the circles on other pages are more irregular; check for
instance f73r.  My impression is that most (if not all) circles in
the VMS were drawn with templates, without use 

All the best,

--stolfi