Download or read book Mariano Taccola and His Book De Ingeneis written by Frank D. Prager and published by MIT Press (MA). This book was released on 1972 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On Engines,dated 1433, is an early and previously unknown treatise on engineering which was prepared for King Sigismund's arrival in Siena as he traveled to Rome for rites of coronation. Mariano Taccola has been described as a designer of military devices, but the drawings and texts of De ingeneisshow his interest in the field of technology to encompass far more than the machines of attack and defense. He deals actively, at times creatively, with bridges and their foundations, with harbors, harbor equipment for the loading of freight, aqueducts both above and below ground, equipment for operating the wells at the end of an aqueduct, mill houses, and the machines and power plants associated with them. The numerous figures and landscapes that accompany his texts also reveal Taccola to be an interesting and original Sienese artist. He portrays human figures in situations that seldom appear in the major arts, and the nature studies among the vignettes beside his texts are distinctive to his art. As in a previous study of Brunelleschi's technology and inventions (MIT Press 1970), the authors represent different viewpoints in their analysis—Frank Prager, the history of technology, and Gustina Scaglia, the history of art. Together they have transcribed and translated the Latin texts and indicated the original form of De ingeneisfrom manuscripts in two libraries. They have summarized as much as is known about Taccola, whose work earned him the name of "the Sienese Archimedes," and have evaluated his achievements as writer, graphic artist, and engineer. The drawings and descriptions of the four books of De ingeneisare presented clearly and concisely, to inform and to teach. For it was about Taccola's time, and with his help, that the long stagnation of many technical practices of the Middle Ages came to an end, and De ingeneisbecame the starting point for a long line of copybooks. Taccola, unlike his predecessors, was particularly interested in describing or suggesting classes of machines, their common parts and basic functions or general rules. He was moved to experiment with different forms of cross-reference between chapters and to develop various means of illustration, using at times a distinct and original method of balancing drawings, texts, and the marginal vignettes used to identify each illustration. Although Mariano Taccola's work was soon surpassed, his manuscripts were copied throughout the fifteenth century as textbooks, and their rediscovery provides invaluable source material for studying the early, transitional history of mechanical technology and adds a new dimension to the history of Quattrocento art.

Download or read book De Ingeneis written by Mariano (Taccola) and published by Reichert Verlag. This book was released on 1990-03-29 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: English description: With the rediscovery of Mariano Taccola's technical manuscripts, a primary source has been found for drawings and texts in treatises and sketchbooks of Francesco di Giorgio Martini. Taccola first conceived a new subject in Renaissance literature: rational descriptions and illustrations of utilitarian structures built by master masons, carpenters, millwrights, and artisans in the service of military lords. Taccola's complex and fascinating manuscript is being published fully in facsimile. It was a gift to Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter who studied law (1533-1542) in Siena, probably at the Studio or University where Taccola had been secretary while writing in the building arts. The volume that Taccola entitled "Liber primus leonis" and "Liber secundis draconis" was modified into a "Notebook" when he, in 1435-1438, added many small sketches around each main drawing existing on a folio, and added quires of paper after Book II for additional and later drawings. This edition includes, in the editors' introduction, a short biography of Mariano Taccola, a history of his "Notebook", a description of its sections, an account of Taccola's contribution to the history of thechnology, and a study of his influencce. Each of Taccola's several hundred drawings is identified, his Latin texts and notes are all transcribed an then translated into English. In one Appendix, the editors illustrate and interpret eight drawings identified as copies of Taccola's originals lost from his "Notebook", and a second Appendix concerns the desings of mills, pile-drivers, and water-supply devices of a Machine Complex that other engineers developed from prototypes in Taccola's "Notebook". German description: Mit der Wiederentdeckung der technischen Handschriften Mariano Taccolas wurde auch die Quelle fur die Zeichnungen und Texte in den Abhandlungen und Skizzenbuchern Francesco di Giorgio Martinis entdeckt. Taccola behandelte als erster ein neues Thema in der Renaissanceliteratur: die rationale Beschreibung und Illustration von Zweckbauten. Das Werk, das Taccola ursprunglich als "Liber primus leonis" und "Liber secundus draconis" angelegt hatte, bekam nach und nach den Charakter eines Notizbuchs, als den Hauptzeichnungen mehrere kleinere Skizzen hinzugefugt und mehrere lose Blatter mit technischen Zeichnungen beigelegt wurden. Die Handschrift war ein Geschenk an Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter, der sich einige Jahre in Siena aufhielt. Aus der Sammlung dieses Humanisten gelangte sie anschliessend nach Munchen. Die vorliegende Faksimileausgabe enthalt neben einer kurzen Biographie Mariano Taccolas die Geschichte dieses Notizbuchs, eine Beschreibung der einzelnen Abschnitte sowie Taccolas Bedeutung fur Wissenschaft und Technik der Renaissance. Jede der mehreren hundert Zeichnungen wird erlautert, Taccolas lateinische Beschreibungen der Maschinen werden in Transkription wiedergegeben und ins Englische ubersetzt. Ein Anhang enthalt die Zeichnungen zu Muhlen, Pfahlrammen und Entwurfen zu Wasserleitungssystemen, die spater nach Taccolas Modellen aus dem "Notebook" entwickelt wurden.

Download or read book De Ingeneis Text written by Mariano Taccola and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 1984 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: English description: With the rediscovery of Mariano Taccola's technical manuscripts, a primary source has been found for drawings and texts in treatises and sketchbooks of Francesco di Giorgio Martini. Taccola first conceived a new subject in Renaissance literature: rational descriptions and illustrations of utilitarian structures built by master masons, carpenters, millwrights, and artisans in the service of military lords. Taccola's complex and fascinating manuscript is being published fully in facsimile. It was a gift to Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter who studied law (1533-1542) in Siena, probably at the Studio or University where Taccola had been secretary while writing in the building arts. The volume that Taccola entitled "Liber primus leonis" and "Liber secundis draconis" was modified into a "Notebook" when he, in 1435-1438, added many small sketches around each main drawing existing on a folio, and added quires of paper after Book II for additional and later drawings. This edition includes, in the editors' introduction, a short biography of Mariano Taccola, a history of his "Notebook", a description of its sections, an account of Taccola's contribution to the history of thechnology, and a study of his influencce. Each of Taccola's several hundred drawings is identified, his Latin texts and notes are all transcribed an then translated into English. In one Appendix, the editors illustrate and interpret eight drawings identified as copies of Taccola's originals lost from his "Notebook", and a second Appendix concerns the desings of mills, pile-drivers, and water-supply devices of a Machine Complex that other engineers developed from prototypes in Taccola's "Notebook". German description: Mit der Wiederentdeckung der technischen Handschriften Mariano Taccolas wurde auch die Quelle fur die Zeichnungen und Texte in den Abhandlungen und Skizzenbuchern Francesco di Giorgio Martinis entdeckt. Taccola behandelte als erster ein neues Thema in der Renaissanceliteratur: die rationale Beschreibung und Illustration von Zweckbauten. Das Werk, das Taccola ursprunglich als "Liber primus leonis" und "Liber secundus draconis" angelegt hatte, bekam nach und nach den Charakter eines Notizbuchs, als den Hauptzeichnungen mehrere kleinere Skizzen hinzugefugt und mehrere lose Blatter mit technischen Zeichnungen beigelegt wurden. Die Handschrift war ein Geschenk an Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter, der sich einige Jahre in Siena aufhielt. Aus der Sammlung dieses Humanisten gelangte sie anschliessend nach Munchen. Die vorliegende Faksimileausgabe enthalt neben einer kurzen Biographie Mariano Taccolas die Geschichte dieses Notizbuchs, eine Beschreibung der einzelnen Abschnitte sowie Taccolas Bedeutung fur Wissenschaft und Technik der Renaissance. Jede der mehreren hundert Zeichnungen wird erlautert, Taccolas lateinische Beschreibungen der Maschinen werden in Transkription wiedergegeben und ins Englische ubersetzt. Ein Anhang enthalt die Zeichnungen zu Muhlen, Pfahlrammen und Entwurfen zu Wasserleitungssystemen, die spater nach Taccolas Modellen aus dem "Notebook" entwickelt wurden.

Download or read book Mariano Taccola de Ingeneis written by Gustina Scaglia and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Mariano Taccola de Ingeneis written by Mariano Taccola (Technical designer, Sculptor, Italy) and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Mariano Taccola de Ingeneis written by Gustina Scaglia and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Italian Renaissance of Machines written by Paolo Galluzzi and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Renaissance was not just a rebirth of the mind. It was also a new dawn for the machine. When we celebrate the achievements of the Renaissance, we instinctively refer, above all, to its artistic and literary masterpieces. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, however, the Italian peninsula was the stage of a no-less-impressive revival of technical knowledge and practice. In this rich and lavishly illustrated volume, Paolo Galluzzi guides readers through a singularly inventive period, capturing the fusion of artistry and engineering that spurred some of the Renaissance’s greatest technological breakthroughs. Galluzzi traces the emergence of a new and important historical figure: the artist-engineer. In the medieval world, innovators remained anonymous. By the height of the fifteenth century, artist-engineers like Leonardo da Vinci were sought after by powerful patrons, generously remunerated, and exhibited in royal and noble courts. In an age that witnessed continuous wars, the robust expansion of trade and industry, and intense urbanization, these practitioners—with their multiple skills refined in the laboratory that was the Renaissance workshop—became catalysts for change. Renaissance masters were not only astoundingly creative but also championed a new concept of learning, characterized by observation, technical know-how, growing mathematical competence, and prowess at the draftsman’s table. The Italian Renaissance of Machines enriches our appreciation for Taccola, Giovanni Fontana, and other masters of the quattrocento and reveals how da Vinci’s ambitious achievements paved the way for Galileo’s revolutionary mathematical science of mechanics.

Download or read book Neither Letters nor Swimming The Rebirth of Swimming and Free diving written by John M. McManamon and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-03-01 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In "Neither Letters nor Swimming": The Rebirth of Swimming and Free-diving, John McManamon documents the revival of interest in swimming during the European Renaissance and its conceptualization as an art. Renaissance scholars realized that the ancients considered one truly ignorant who knew “neither letters nor swimming.”

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to the Italian Renaissance written by Michael Wyatt and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-26 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading international contributors present a lively and interdisciplinary panorama of the Italian Renaissance as it has developed in recent decades.

Download or read book Stronger Than a Hundred Men written by Terry S. Reynolds and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1983 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like many apparently simple devices, the vertical water wheel has been around for so long that it is taken for granted. Yet this "picturesque artifact" was for centuries man's primary mechanical source of power and was the foundation upon which mills and other industries developed. Stronger than a Hundred Men explores the development of the vertical water wheel from its invention in ancient times through its eventual demise as a source of power during the Industrial Revolution. Spanning more than 2000 years, Terry Reynolds's account follows the progression of this labor-saving device from Asia to the Middle East, Europe, and America-covering the evolution of the water wheel itself, the development of dams and reservoirs, and the applications of water power.

Download or read book Renaissance Fun written by Philip Steadman and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renaissance Fun is about the technology of Renaissance entertainments in stage machinery and theatrical special effects; in gardens and fountains; and in the automata and self-playing musical instruments that were installed in garden grottoes. How did the machines behind these shows work? How exactly were chariots filled with singers let down onto the stage? How were flaming dragons made to fly across the sky? How were seas created on stage? How did mechanical birds imitate real birdsong? What was ‘artificial music’, three centuries before Edison and the phonograph? How could pipe organs be driven and made to play themselves by waterpower alone? And who were the architects, engineers, and craftsmen who created these wonders? All these questions are answered. At the end of the book we visit the lost ‘garden of marvels’ at Pratolino with its many grottoes, automata and water jokes; and we attend the performance of Mercury and Mars in Parma in 1628, with its spectacular stage effects and its music by Claudio Monteverdi – one of the places where opera was born. Renaissance Fun is offered as an entertainment in itself. But behind the show is a more serious scholarly argument, centred on the enormous influence of two ancient writers on these subjects, Vitruvius and Hero. Vitruvius’s Ten Books on Architecture were widely studied by Renaissance theatre designers. Hero of Alexandria wrote the Pneumatics, a collection of designs for surprising and entertaining devices that were the models for sixteenth and seventeenth century automata. A second book by Hero On Automata-Making – much less well known, then and now – describes two miniature theatres that presented plays without human intervention. One of these, it is argued, provided the model for the type of proscenium theatre introduced from the mid-sixteenth century, the generic design which is still built today. As the influence of Vitruvius waned, the influence of Hero grew.

Download or read book Selected Essays on Pre and Early Modern Mathematical Practice written by Jens Høyrup and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-09-20 with total page 969 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a broad selection of articles mainly published during the last two decades on a variety of topics within the history of mathematics, mostly focusing on particular aspects of mathematical practice. This book is of interest to, and provides methodological inspiration for, historians of science or mathematics and students of these disciplines.

Download or read book Openness Secrecy Authorship written by Pamela O. Long and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2003-04-30 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the book and intellectual property that includes military technology and military secrets. Winner of The Morris D. Forkosch Prize from the Journal of the History of Ideas In today's world of intellectual property disputes, industrial espionage, and book signings by famous authors, one easily loses sight of the historical nature of the attribution and ownership of texts. In Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance, Pamela Long combines intellectual history with the history of science and technology to explore the culture of authorship. Using classical Greek as well as medieval and Renaissance European examples, Long traces the definitions, limitations, and traditions of intellectual and scientific creation and attribution. She examines these attitudes as they pertain to the technical and the practical. Although Long's study follows a chronological development, this is not merely a general work. Long is able to examine events and sources within their historical context and locale. By looking at Aristotelian ideas of Praxis, Techne, and Episteme. She explains the tension between craft and ideas, authors and producers. She discusses, with solid research and clear prose, the rise, wane, and resurgence of priority in the crediting and lionizing of authors. Long illuminates the creation and re-creation of ideas like "trade secrets," "plagiarism," "mechanical arts," and "scribal culture." Her historical study complicates prevailing assumptions while inviting a closer look at issues that define so much of our society and thought to this day. She argues that "a useful working definition of authorship permits a gradation of meaning between the poles of authority and originality," and guides us through the term's nuances with clarity rarely matched in a historical study.

Download or read book A History of Engineering in Classical and Medieval Times written by Donald Hill and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-19 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is impossible to understand the cultures and achievements of the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, and Arabs, without knowing something of their technology. Rome, for example, made advances in many areas which were subsequently lost and not regained for more than a millenium. This is a knowledgeable yet lucid account of the wonderful triumphs and the limitations of ancient and medieval engineering. This book systematically describes what is known about the evolution of irrigation works, dams, bridges, roads, building construction, water and wind power, automata, and clocks, with references to the social, geographical, and intellectual context.

Download or read book Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science written by Alberto Perez-Gomez and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 1985-04-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This important book, which won the 1984 Alice Davis Hitchcock Award, traces the process by which the mystical and numerological grounds for the use of number and geometry in building gave way to the more functional and technical ones that prevail in architectural theory and practice today. Between the late Renaissance and the early nineteenth century, the ancient arts of architecture were being profoundly transformed by the scientific revolution. This important book, which won the 1984 Alice Davis Hitchcock Award, traces the process by which the mystical and numerological grounds for the use of number and geometry in building gave way to the more functional and technical ones that prevail in architectural theory and practice today. Throughout, it relates the major architectural treatises of successive generations to the larger culture and the writings of philosophers, mathematicians, scientists, and engineers. The book leads the reader through the controversy that was generated by Claude Perrault in the seventeenth century. His writings began to cast doubt on the absolute aesthetic value of the classical orders and the "perfect" proportions that were architecture's legacy from Pythagorean times. Thus the once immutable "invisible" system lost its special status forever. The book focuses in particular on eighteenth-century developments in the science of mechanics and emerging techniques in structural analysis which slowly entered the architectural treatises and found their way into practice, often by way of civil and military engineers. And by the nineteenth century, the book notes, even architectural rendering and drawing were radically changed through the introduction of new descriptive and projective geometries. Tracing these fundamental changes in architectural intentions, Pérez-Gómez challenges many popular misconceptions about the theory and history of modern architecture. At the same time, he suggests an intangible loss, that of a culture's power to express through a building its total mathematical, mystical, and magical world-view.

Download or read book The Water Supply System of Siena Italy written by Michael P. Kucher and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-28 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book reviews scholarly literature and archival sources including maps and diagrams, to better situate Siena's achievement in urban history and broadens our understanding of medieval technology and urban life.

Download or read book Watermarks written by Leslie A. Geddes and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An exploration of depictions and use of water within Renaissance Italy, and especially in the work of polymath Leonardo da Vinci. Both a practical necessity and a powerful symbol, water presents one of the most challenging problems in visual art due to its formlessness, clarity, and mutability. In Renaissance Italy, it was a nearly inexhaustible subject of inquiry for artists, engineers, and architects alike: it represented an element to be productively harnessed and a force of untamed nature. Watermarks places the depiction and use of water within an intellectual history of early modern Italy, examining the parallel technological and aesthetic challenges of mastering water and the scientific and artistic practices that emerged in response to them. Focusing primarily on the wide-ranging work of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)-at once an artist, scientist, and inventor-Leslie Geddes shows how the deployment of artistic media, such as ink and watercolor, closely correlated with the engineering challenges of controlling water in the natural world. For da Vinci and his peers, she argues, drawing was an essential form of visual thinking. Geddes analyses a wide range of da Vinci's subject matter, including machine drawings, water management schemes, and depictions of the natural landscape, and demonstrates how drawing-as an intellectual practice, a form of scientific investigation, and a visual representation-constituted a distinct mode of problem solving integral to his understanding of the natural environment. Throughout, Geddes draws important connections between works by da Vinci that have long been overlooked, the artistic and engineering practices of his day, and critical questions about the nature of seeing and depicting the almost unseeable during the early modern period"--