Le machine. Volume nuovo et di molto artificio

da fare effetti maravigliosi tanto spirituali quanto di animale operatione, arichito di bellisime figure con le dichiarationi a ciascuna di esse in lingua volgare et Latina (...). Del Sig. Giovanni Branca cittadino Romano, ingeniero & architetto della Sta. Casa di Loreto. Rome, Giacomo Mascardi for Giacomo Marcucci, 1629, (3),40; 14; 23 lvs., w. engr. title-p. incorporating the figures of Vitruvius and and Archimedes, and 77 full-p. woodcut illustrations, numbered in letterpress with Roman numbers corresponding with the numbering of the lvs. 1-40, 1-14 and 1-23, contemp. Italian limp vellum with old manuscript title on spine, 4to.

Good copy. Partly browned/ foxed and with occas. waterstains in blank margins; leaf F with closed tear; endpapers, pastedowns and portion of blank fore-edge margin of title-p. strengthened. Vellum w. small defects and with careful restorations. Cat. of Wheeler gift 96; Dibner, Heralds of science, 175; Norman Lib. 333; not in Roberts & Trent, Bibliotheca mechanica. The first and only edition of this famous, richly illustrated guidebook on the construction of all sorts of mechanical devices and engines, by Giovanni Branca (1571-1645), in the tradition of Vittorio Zonca, Leonardo da Vinci and Giorgio Martini, but primarily with new examples. For instance, Branca is chiefly remembered for the first known illustration and application of a steam turbine (number XXV, a machine to pound pestles in mortars). The other machines of the first section are used for sawing, threshing and milling grains, spinning, drawing water, ringing bells, lifting or dragging heavy objects etc. The second section is devoted primarily to pumps such as an Archimedes' screw (number V). Many of the machines in the last section are also hydrualic in nature, including applications in mining. A very interesting machine is the one shown on the illustration misnumbered XXI (= XIX): it is used to pump air for a pipe organ.