I have a favourite plot, but it does not yet include the bit about "scientists making a breakthough and sending shock waves etc. "
With a little effort I could probably try to come up with something, but prefer not to.
It goes like this.
A man who spent his life in or near a major library, perhaps a family library like that of the Visconti, or a now lost one like in "The name of the rose", has developed his own ideas about life, science and the universe, and spent the best years of his life writing this down. He developed his own langauge, or perhaps just a code, for this purpose. When he feels his end is nearing, he passes his draft document, with lots of sketches, on paper, to his sons, with the urgent wish to make a clean copy to preserve his work for posterity. He may well have been collecting pieces of parchment over time, to give to them for this task.
Out of respect, or gratitude, or other reasons, they agree and commit to do this.
Now the extent to which they failed to create a proper copy, and introduced errors due to their misunderstanding, can take quite extreme forms.
Also the quality of the original drawings and the layout may have been anywhere between good and 'just some basic instructions'.
Much of the original meaning could have been lost this way, or just gravely distorted.
I am of course not too convinced that this is what really happened, but similar to Stolfi I do believe that the MS was not written onto parchment from scratch, but after a draft, most probably on paper.
With a little effort I could probably try to come up with something, but prefer not to.
It goes like this.
A man who spent his life in or near a major library, perhaps a family library like that of the Visconti, or a now lost one like in "The name of the rose", has developed his own ideas about life, science and the universe, and spent the best years of his life writing this down. He developed his own langauge, or perhaps just a code, for this purpose. When he feels his end is nearing, he passes his draft document, with lots of sketches, on paper, to his sons, with the urgent wish to make a clean copy to preserve his work for posterity. He may well have been collecting pieces of parchment over time, to give to them for this task.
Out of respect, or gratitude, or other reasons, they agree and commit to do this.
Now the extent to which they failed to create a proper copy, and introduced errors due to their misunderstanding, can take quite extreme forms.
Also the quality of the original drawings and the layout may have been anywhere between good and 'just some basic instructions'.
Much of the original meaning could have been lost this way, or just gravely distorted.
I am of course not too convinced that this is what really happened, but similar to Stolfi I do believe that the MS was not written onto parchment from scratch, but after a draft, most probably on paper.