Elena Gray-Blanc

Admiral Nelson's left-handed notes.

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For anyone who may, for whatever reason, be ignorant of the fact, 2008 is the 250th anniversary of the birth of Admiral Horatio Nelson, the famous English hero who died at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.

It’s all right — I didn’t know either.

But the staff of the little-known Karpeles Manuscript Library, located conveniently downtown on Anapamu Street, does know. In fact they planned for the occasion, and pulled several documents penned by the admiral out of storage to display. One piece, a note written mere weeks after Nelson lost his right arm in the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1797, is not only a testament to his perseverance — he’d just had an arm amputated, let me reiterate — but also a bizarre specimen of his handwriting.

Perhaps Nelson’s left-handed writing is a relatively obscure sample of the wonders on display at the Karpeles Manuscript Library, but items of more popular interest abound. The collection of religious documents, for example, is extraordinary. In addition to pages from an original Gutenberg Bible, the library contains portions of an original King James Bible, printed in 1611, as well as the first five books of the Torah, handwritten 350 years ago on deerskin (or gvil, as the material is called in Hebrew).

Elena Gray-Blanc

The original control console for the Apollo moon missions

Despite the name, the Karpeles Manuscript Library isn’t even limited to the written word. One case contains several ancient Egyptian sculptures, among them a funerary sculpture known as an ushabti figurine. Ushabtis were intended to travel to the afterlife with the deceased, taking his or her place when any work needed to be done — thus leaving the deceased free to relax. Other Egyptian artifacts at the library include sandstone tablets carved in the images of Horus, Thoth, and other Egyptian gods, and a scarab amulet.

Then there are the displays that are just bizarre. One case holds a variety of pieces taken from original spacecraft, including a part of the control panel from an Apollo craft used in a moon mission. “How,” one of the Karpeles docents rhetorically asked me, “could you possibly go to the moon using that?” Indeed. There are buttons enigmatically labeled “verb” and “noun,” among other cryptic controls. The whole apparatus is doubtless less computationally powerful than the average contemporary hand-held calculator. A Russian panel is displayed beside the Apollo version.

Perhaps the most mind-boggling aspect of the Karpeles Manuscript Library is that these artifacts, and the many more available for inspection, are only a small part of the total Karpeles collection. A Montecito vault holds far more, including some originals deemed too precious to show except in facsimile. The collection, accumulated by David Karpeles, a Santa Barbara native, is divided between storage and eight museums nationwide.

Elena Gray-Blanc

Martin Behaim's 1492 World Globe, used by Christopher Columbus. China is shown here.

The second-most bizarre thing about my visit to the Karpeles Manuscript Library was that, for most of my hour-long visit, I was the only person there. Given the incredible historical value of the collection, the library ought to be teeming with students, at least; even starving students, because admission is free.

Both free and weird — what could be better?

The Karpeles Manuscript Library, located at 21 W. Anapamu St., is open seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is always free. For more information, call 962-5322 or visit the Karpeles Web site.

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