JF Ptak Science Books Post #83
This post started with this image from Georg Andreas Bockler Theatrum Machinarum Novum (published by Paulus Fuersen and printed by Christoff Gerhard in Nurenberg in 1661) showing to what our eyes in 2008 see as an extraordinary device to power a fan for a dining table.
The gears running what seems to be an escapement-like (clock) device are enormous, and the weight for the weight-driven power source must have been considerable. The result of all of this is that the housing for machine powering the fan necessitate lowering the ceiling in the dining chamber to less than five feet (as there is just enough headroom to get into and out of seat, with the bulk of the cubic space of the room dedicated to the cooling device, which ran like a pendulum, and which also demanded what looks to be like a 10-foot x 1 foot long opening in the ceiling. But if it was a hot humid day in Nurnberg in the summer of 1666, then that fan would feel pretty bloody good to you, as there would have been nothing like it in the city (save for a servant fanning you from not such a discrete distance).
Bockler as it turns out was an extraordinary talent and very gifted thinker and engineer, designing all manner of instruments and machines over a wide range of fields. His principle interest though was hydraulics, as exhibited in his very popular Architectura Curiosa Nova (1664), which was a practical application of his knowledge of hydrodynamics and mechanics (in general), showing how to construct fountains for the garden and for public city life.
Looking deeper into the beautifully illustrated Theatrum Machinarum though I was struck by how many of these big machines were powered by humans. And as it turns out Bockler was responding with smaller, more elegant human-power designs because of a problem in supply for the other power sources. The problem with running a furnace to power these machines was the fuel—wood and coal had become problematic on the continent and in Britain in the mid-17th century. The trees that would’ve supplied the wood for the furnaces were disappearing with the rapidly depleted forests. Coal was even a problem with the relatively shallow veins of the deposit giving out. In the meantime of the stagnant power supplies Bockler offered his readers (and parishioners) designs for machines that if all else failed could be powered by humans. Humans on treadmills, humans turning lathes, and so on.
I’ve included this last part for a horse-driven machine because of the very small window of exposure for the horse to the wheel it would turn. It looks as though it was elegant but I haven’t much of an idea if horses could get used to moving their hind legs without moving their front legs.
You can see the entire Theatrum courtesy of Cornell University right HERE.
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