Leonardo Da Vinci and Issac Newton were both consummate note takers. They recorded their thoughts, ideas, and anything else that struck their fancy in innumerable notebooks and loose sheets of paper.

Paper was expensive so they both wrote small and covered every inch of paper with drawings and script.

Newton wrote in Latin, Greek, and English with most subject titles in Latin and the text in Greek. To save space his letters were an eye straining one sixteenth of an inch high. An estimated 4000 pages with around 285,000 words plus drawings of his writings have been found to date.

Leonardo wrote in Tuscan Italian, with the text written in a right to left mirror style which some believe he did because he was left-handed, as, by-the-way so was Newton. 13,000 pages of Leonardo’s notes have been found which is believed to be only about a fifth of the total.

Source: “Isaac Newton” by James Gleick, 2003. “Leonardo’s Notebooks” Edited by H. Anna Suh, 2005. “Leonardo Da Vinci” by Walter Isaacson, 2017. Graphic of da Vinci and Newton AI generated.