Historian uses lasers to unlock mysteries of Gothic cathedrals

Two researchers at Columbia University— Peter Allen , a computer scientist, and Stephen Murray , an art historian—attempted one of the first laser scans of a Gothic building in 2001 at the cathedral in Beauvais , north of Paris, which Murray had once measured by hand with steel tape and wooden calipers. “You can’t really just fly over with a helicopter, scan the building, and call it a day,” says John Ochsendorf, an MIT engineer who is using Tallon’s scans to create a small-scale model of Bourges Cathedral with a 3-D printer. Even though medieval builders strove to create perfect dwelling places for the spirit of God, Tallon’s scans reveal that the western end of the cathedral is “a total mess … a train wreck.”

Source: news.nationalgeographic.com