Juanelo Turriano Research Articles

A Tale of Three Thirsty Cities: The Innovative Water Systems of Toledo, London and Paris in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century by Jaime-Chaim Shulman

Reviewed by: A Tale of Three Thirsty Cities: The Innovative Water Systems of Toledo, London and Paris in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century by Jaime-Chaim Shulman Karel Davids (bio) A Tale of Three Thirsty Cities: The Innovative Water Systems of Toledo, London and Paris in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century By Jaime-Chaim Shulman. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2018. Pp. 398. Water supply systems are a convenient yardstick for comparing societies’ technological capabilities. After all, no society can survive for long without effective arrangements for the regular provision of water. Jaime-Chaim Shulman has studied water supply projects in three European cities in the sixteenth century. He thus contributes both to our knowledge of building urban water supply systems in the early modern period and insight into how city authorities under different political regimes handled large-scale public works. While his focus is early modern Europe, Shulman contextualizes his subject by devoting a long introductory chapter to water-lifting devices, from Graeco-Roman times and the early Islamic world, to Italy and Germany during the Renaissance. He provides an almost exhaustive overview of aqueducts, norias, Archimedean screws, force pumps, inclined planes, and other water-raising mechanisms described in “theatres of machines” published in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. At the heart of A Tale of Three Thirsty Cities are the next three chapters [End Page 953] discussing new water supply systems built in the most populated cities of Spain, England, and France between 1560 and 1620: in Toledo Juanelo Turriano constructed the Artificio, which lifted water from the Tajo river almost one hundred meters up to Alcázar palace; in London, Peter Morris built waterworks that pumped water from the Thames under London Bridge to a network of wooden pipes for consumption in the city; and in Paris, Jean Lintlaër erected the “Samaritaine” engine, pumping water from the Seine under Pont Neuf bridge to the nearby Louvre and Tuileries palaces and gardens. One of the strengths of Shulman’s study is his meticulous reconstruction of how these engines worked, who funded them, how they functioned over time and their impact, if any, on the development of water-supply technology in general. For this purpose, in an exemplary manner the author combines written, printed, and beautifully reproduced pictorial sources. However greatly contemporaries and posterity admired these ingenious devices and the engineer-entrepreneurs who constructed them, these systems nevertheless did not quench the cities’ thirst. The machines in Toledo and Paris only served the needs of royal households, while the waterworks in London almost exclusively provided water to fee-paying citizens. For their water supply, most of the populations depended on wells, fountains, and water carriers. Still, the comparison between the three projects, as Shulman rightly points out in his conclusion, reveals the crucial importance of political and financial factors in the construction and upkeep of water supply systems. While the King in Paris and the city government in London showed an enduring commitment to support the new projects, the royal and municipal authorities in Toledo were from the very beginning at odds about who should fund and maintain the new waterworks. Ultimately, Turriano died penniless and his Artificio was in ruins by 1640. There are some puzzling aspects, however, regarding Shulman’s selection of cases and the way he contextualizes his subject. Given his aim to shed light on the attitudes of city authorities to water supply systems, why does he only compare cities in kingdoms? This choice is even harder to understand, as the engineers who designed the new supply systems were foreigners. Turriano hailed from Italy, Morris and Lintlaër came from the Low Countries. As the author reminds us, this finding underscores the vital role of human mobility in the cross-border transfer of knowledge, but it also begs the question why these specialists did not originate from Spain, England, or France. This is all the more intriguing, as the same observation applies to the experts in land reclamation, who Shulman briefly discusses by way of comparison. Yet, this issue is neither addressed in the conclusion nor in the introduction, which purports to put the development of water-lifting technology in...

VISITING THE VIRTUOSO IN EARLY MODERN SPAIN: THE CASE OF JUAN DE ESPINA

VISITING THE VIRTUOSO IN EARLY MODERN SPAIN: THE CASE OF JUAN DE ESPINA

Review: Leonardo Turriano: Ingeniero del rey by Alicia Cámara, Rafael Moreira, Marino Viganò

Leonardo Turriano (1559–1629) was a military engineer. Born in Cremona, in Spanish Lombardy, his career largely developed in Spain and Portugal, although he also served briefly at the court of Rudolf II in Prague whence, in 1582, he was called to Iberia by Phillip II to work on fortifications. Only two years after the dynastic union of the crowns of Madrid and Lisbon under the Spanish Habsburgs, Turriano arrived at the seat of a world empire where the sun never set and, by 1598, he was named the chief engineer of the kingdom of Portugal. At the Spanish court, he entered into the competitive circuit of the other military engineering advisers and faced direct rivalry from his compatriot, Tiburcio Spannochi.This book, published by the Fundación Juanelo Turriano, makes a fundamental contribution to the understanding of Leonardo Turriano's undervalued and misunderstood character. In nearly three hundred beautifully illustrated pages, it offers a parallel discovery of Turriano's writing and his cartographic or iconographic work, considered alongside that of his professional colleagues. Indeed, visual presentation is one of the main features of this book, including five luxuriously reproduced drawings depicting Turriano's fortification projects for Oran and Mazalquivir (today, neighboring cities in Algeria), that unfold at a large scale. The book is divided into three parts, each with a different objective, written by Alicia Cámara, Rafael Moreira, and Marino Viganò—Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian scholars.Cámara's

Historia de la robótica: de Arquitas de Tarento al robot Da Vinci (Parte I)

Robotic surgery is the newst technologic option in urology. To understand how new robots work is interesting to know their history. The desire to design machines imitating humans continued for more than 4000 years. There are references to King-su Tse (clasic China) making up automaton at 500 a. C. Archytas of Tarentum (at around 400 a.C.) is considered the father of mechanical engineering, and one of the occidental robotics classic referents. Heron of Alexandria, Hsieh-Fec, Al-Jazari, Roger Bacon, Juanelo Turriano, Leonardo da Vinci, Vaucanson o von Kempelen were robot inventors in the middle age, renaissance and classicism. At the XIXth century, automaton production underwent a peak and all engineering branches suffered a great development. At 1942 Asimov published the three robotics laws, based on mechanics, electronics and informatics advances. At XXth century robots able to do very complex self governing works were developed, like da Vinci Surgical System (Intuitive Surgical Inc, Sunnyvale, CA, USA), a very sophisticated robot to assist surgeons.

Recent Symposia of the International Committee for the History of Technology, 2002-2004

Recent Symposia of the International Committee for the History of Technology, 2002–2004 Susan Horning (bio) and James C. Williams (bio) During the past three years, the International Committee for the History of Technology (ICOHTEC) has held its annual symposium in Spain, Russia, and Germany. In June 2002, ICOHTEC met in Granada, Spain, at the invitation of Javier Goicolea, the Fundacion Juanelo Turriano, and the University of Granada. In August 2003 the venues were St. Petersburg and Moscow, and Vassily Borisov and the St. Petersburg Polytechnic University and the Institute of the History of Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences played host. Wolfhard Weber, the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, and the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum sponsored the society's thirty-first symposium in August 2004. In Granada, two hundred attendees participated in fourteen sessions featuring more than 175 papers; more than one hundred gathered in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and in Bochum, 120 historians, engineers, and architects participated. All three symposia attracted conferees from Europe and Russia as well as North and South America, Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific. Graduate students and eligible international members of SHOT were able to attend thanks to generous travel support from the Society for the History of Technology. Thematic Sessions One of the distinctive characteristics of ICOHTEC symposia is the expanded thematic sessions containing from five to twenty papers in panels [End Page 594] grouped into hour-and-a-half time slots. This encourages wide-ranging discussion of the papers within the larger session themes, and over the past several years a number of ongoing conversations have blossomed. Technology, Music, and Art Hans-Joachim Braun (Germany) organized an expanded session on music and technology in Budapest in 1996, and he has continued organizing sessions on the general theme of technology and the arts for succeeding symposia. In Granada, "Creativity: Science, Technology and the Arts" focused on changes over time in processes of "cross fertilization" between the arts and technology. Panels in this session focused on general concepts and improvisation, redefinitions in music and the performing arts, and engineering and design in the fine arts. Notable papers were presented by Bernard Jim (U.S.A.), who discussed how the artists Richard Serra, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Rachel Whiteread attempted to subvert the spectacle of building demolition through site-specific sculptures; Susan Schmidt Horning (U.S.A.), who investigated how creativity as collaboration played out in American postwar recording studios; and David Kilpatrick (U.S.A.), who looked at how the incorporation of computer-controlled scenery has affected the performer's creativity in the modern theater. In Russia, "Technology and the Arts (with special reference to Russia)" contained an eclectic group of twelve papers that were presented in panels in both St. Petersburg and Moscow. Topics ranged from depictions of the iron industry in sixteenth-century Dutch painting (Michael Mende, Germany) to twenty-first-century interactive art (Julie Wosk, U.S.A.); in between were papers on technology and music, photography, architecture, literature, film and opera. Dimitri Bayuk (Russia) described the obscure invention of the Russian novelist Prince Vladimir Odoevsky, a split-key piano, while Karen Freeze (U.S.A.) vividly detailed the grandiose and creative use of light, sound, and staging in the Seattle Opera's production of Wagner's Ring Cycle. Other highlights included Guzel Krassilchtchikowa's (Russia) paper on the TsAG Complex of the 1920s and 1930s, Nikolaus Katzer's (Germany) exploration of technology and industrialization in Russian literature and cinema at the turn of the twentieth century, Oleg Adamov's (Russia) study of man and machine in VKHUTEMAS, and Hans-Joachim Braun's discussion of Russian constructivism. In all, these papers represented a truly international and interdisciplinary range of scholarship that appealed to specialist and novice alike. For ICOHTEC's Ruhr-area sysmposium in Bochum, a session on "Technology, the Arts and Technological Landscapes" asked how technological landscapes are reflected in the arts and whether there is evidence that artists' visions of technological landscapes influenced the redesigning of those landscapes. Catrin Gersdorf (Germany), treating landscape as a spatial concept as well as a material reality, analyzed the American photographer [End Page 595] Richard Misrach's "Desert Cantos," in...

The Twenty-One Books of Engineering and Machines of Juanelo Turriano

The Twenty-One Books of Engineering and Machines of Juanelo Turriano

Juanelo Turriano, Charles V’s Clockmaker: The Man and His Legend by José A. García-Diego

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 287 and artisan practice. He has also tried to trace Zonca’s life. But little information is available. We have records of his death at age thirtyfour and the deaths of his immediate family; we know where he lived, in the Torrazzo, a medieval stronghold that had been renovated; and he appears as godfather to the children of friends but presumably did not himself marry. From his work as architect, only his letter to the council and the map survive—no building in Padua or elsewhere is known to have been designed by him. Poni also sought notes that would disclose the reactions of past owners of Zonca’s book. (Robert Hooke probably owned a copy; his diary mentions buying “an Italian of machines,” and Zonca is the likeliest candidate.) Unluckily, the only picture that seems to have aroused comment—and then ofcontempt— was a weird perpetual motion device taken from a manuscript of Francesco di Giorgio. It is indeed disappointing to find it in such a book—Zonca ought to have seen through it. Perhaps that just proves that Zonca failed to benefit from the presence of Galileo. At all events, the Cambridge University Library’s copy of a later edition of Zonca contains a penciled note even ruder than any found by Poni: “e questa e una coglioneria. . . .” Alex Keller Dr. Keller teaches the history of science and technology at the University of Leices­ ter. Recently he was a Senior Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution, researching ma­ chines and mechanics in the culture of the Renaissance. Juanelo Turriano, Charles V’j Clockmaker: The Man and His Legend. By José A. Garcia-Diego. Translated by Charles David Ley. Madrid and Canton, Mass.: Editorial Castalia and Science History Publications (Watson Publishing International), 1986. Pp. xix+ 165; illustrations, notes, appendix, bibliography, index. $35.00 (cloth); $20.00 (paper). Available from Science History Pubs., P.O. Box 493, Canton, Mas­ sachusetts 02021. A study of the work ofJuanelo Turriano, the foremost technologist of the 16th century—“facile princeps” as Charles V called him in 1554—about whom very little is known, cannot fail to be of interest to readers of this journal. It has to be admitted, however, that even after José Garcia-Diego has combed the literature and added to it by unearthing numbers of documents in the archives of Spain and Italy, there are still more lacunae than hard facts in this account of Turriano ’s career as horologist. Turriano’s fame during his lifetime and after was, of course, based also on his achievements in constructing the two celebrated water-lifting devices in Toledo, completed in 1569 and 1581 respectively. But this period of activity covering the last 288 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE twenty years of his life (1565-85) is given, reasonably enough, only brief mention, apart from references to his further work on clocks and on problems of calendrical reform, and to the book he was then composing on his two masterworks, the astronomical clocks—the Mil­ anese Planetarium, completed in 1550, and El Cristalino of ca. 1565. Turriano was born in Cremona about 1500. Although apparently from a poor family and without formal education, he found that his intellectual capacity attracted attention; maybe on this account he was helped to an apprenticeship as clockmaker in Cremona. At all events, he was referred to as “Master” in 1529 on his receipt of payment for work on the clock of the city cathedral. It is likely that he was then already contemplating the construction of an astronomical clock that would surpass de Dondi’s astrarium of ca.1360, but whether he even saw its remains, let alone repaired it, is uncertain. At some point Turriano moved to Milan, set up a workshop, and evidently acquired a considerable reputation as an expert craftsman. This last was even­ tually to win him the commission to construct an astronomical clock for presentation to the emperor Charles V. It seems to have been completed by 1550, for in that year the clock was taken by Turriano to the emperor in person in either Augsburg or Innsbruck. Somewhat later he accepted a place at court and in...

Clockwork Cosmos: Bernardo Facini and the Farnese Planisferologio by Silvio A. Bedini

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 289 Dr. Hollister-Short is honorary lecturer in the history of technology in the De­ partment of Humanities at Imperial College of Science and Technology. He is com­ pleting a history of the Stangenkunst (rod engine). Clockwork Cosmos: Bernardo Facini and the Farnese Planisferologio. By Sil­ vio A. Bedini. Citta del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1985. Pp. 223; illustrations, notes, appendixes, bibliography, index. L 40,000.00 +handling (paper). The “Planisferologio” devised and built by Bernardo Facini is, after the 16th-century masterpieces of Juanelo Turriano, the most impor­ tant clock made south of the Alps. Having said this, one should qualify the statement. The term “Planisferologio” was created by Facini to distinguish his own masterpiece and means an exposition of the ce­ lestial sphere on a flat surface. The word “clock” is used here in its widest acceptation, meaning those astronomical machines that sci­ entifically represent the universe and that became more elaborate and accurate with the passing of the centuries. The attribution of both the project and the making of the Planisferologio to the genius and man­ ual skill of Facini alone can now safely be made, thanks to the brilliant and painstaking labors of Silvio A. Bedini. Bedini’s contributions to the studies of science and technology are far-reaching and widely known. In Clockwork Cosmos, his particular interest in Italian developments has led to a full understanding of both the historical and scientific context of Facini and his clock. This book is so eminently readable that the lay reader risks overlooking the specific information contained therein. Part of it is new and con­ clusive about a significant point in the history of horology. For two and a half centuries, in fact, doubts surrounded the true authorship of the Planisferologio. Bernardo Facini (1665—1731) was an instrument maker at a time when clockmaking was already a specialized and exclusive profession in most European centers. He was born in Venice and worked there for the greater part of his life. He had working connections with Vincenzo Coronelli, the celebrated cosmographer and globe maker fifteen years his senior. Facini must have learned a great deal while attending a workshop that had knowledgeable customers. In about 1697, he and Coronelli produced a nautical compendium now in the Hermitage. At least another twelve scientific instruments signed by Facini have survived. They are of various types, in part of original design; no two are alike. They denote the mathematical inclination and the inventiveness of their maker. It is not known whether Facini also made ordinary instruments in order to earn a living. He does not appear to have been a prolific maker—not a single clock or watch signed by him is known except for the Planisferologio. 290 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE However ingenious and original his scientific instruments, Facini would not have ranked as high as he does if, in about 1715-16, he had not come across a remarkable astronomical clock made more than thirty years earlier. Its maker, Bartolomeo Ferrari from Bologna, had created the word “Sferologio” for his machine and in 1683 had pub­ lished a booklet with explanations about it. In this he freely acknowl­ edged his debt to Geminiano Montanari, a professor at the University of Bologna and later Padua, for the mathematical and astronomical information he had used. This significant but straightforward event was the origin of the confusion that puzzled a number of scholars both in Italy and abroad until the publication of Bedini’s book. In about 1716—17, Facini undertook to restore Ferrari’s Sferologio at Piacenza. It was now owned by Francesco I Farnese, Duke of Parma and Piacenza. The restoration work took about three years, during which time Facini must have profited from the mechanical and sci­ entific results of the Ferrari and Montanari achievement and from the booklet on the Sferologio that was also at his disposal. Then Facini was appointed mechanician to the duchess. He saw the opportunity to develop an ambitious project about an astronomical clock of his own, far more complicated than the one he had just restored and embodying many new horological inventions. Facini had in mind attempts to...

Introduction and analysis of the 21 books of devices and of machines by Pseudo Juanelo Turriano∗

Introduction and analysis of the 21 books of devices and of machines by Pseudo Juanelo Turriano∗

The Chapter on Weirs in the Codex of Juanelo Turriano: A Question of Authorship

In paying posthumous homage to Ladislao Reti, Bern Dibner made reference to the articles Reti published in this journal concerning the remarkable manuscript ofJuanelo Turriano preserved in the Madrid National Library.1 This manuscript, the Turriano Codex, owes its vital importance to the fact that it is the earliest known treatise on hydraulic engineering. It is, furthermore, of a high technical standard, to the extent that its author may be fairly described as a rationalist. He bases his arguments, wherever possible, on his own experimental deductions, instead of on tradition; he thus applies to technology that philosophy of science which was born during the Renaissance.

On the Efficiency of Early Horizontal Waterwheels

cestry and once widespread diffusion were indeed amazingly efficient.1 There is a substantial difference between speculations about drawings and descriptions contained in old books and manuscripts and actual observation and measurement of the performance of working machines as done by Wulff. His factual finding that free jet mills of Persia of traditional construction are capable of delivering a power output of 8-10 h.p. with a coefficient of efficiency of 75 per cent is likely to provoke a stir among historians of technology interested in rationally interpreting the development of man's quest for mechanical power. The Persian mills studied by Wulff are similar to the molinos de bomba that Juanelo Turriano described around 1560.2 Juanelo refers to them as well known, and there are good reasons to suppose that they do not differ substantially from those depicted almost a century earlier by Francesco di Giorgio and Leonardo da Vinci. We do not know for how long they have been established in the East, but if an interdependence exists, transmission is more likely to be East-West than vice versa.

A Postscript to Reti's Notes on Juanelo Turriano's Water Mills

Historians of technology interested in early sources of mechanical power should be particularly grateful for Ladislao Reti's preliminary publication of extracts from Volume III of Juanelo Turriano's sixteenthcentury codex on engineering and machines.1 While I fully agree with Reti that the efficiency and power output of horizontal waterwheels generally have been underrated, his estimates of 18 h.p. for one of the mills and a corresponding grinding output of 510 kg/hour are difficult to reconcile with data that I recorded for free-jet mills in Persia. These mills are in almost every respect identical with the molino de bomba shown in Figure 1 of Reti's article. The data obtained for the Persian mills include the waterhead, the jet diameter, the rotor diameter, the millstone diameter, the grain ouput, and the speed of millstone and rotor. In order to calculate the actual power output of the mill cited by Reti, we might use the given data for the Persian mills, comparing the required power with a similar mill recently converted to dieselengine operation. The data are average values recorded in three mills at Qasr-e Dasht, 5 miles west of Shiraz (Fig. 1). There is little variation from the values obtained in the northern province of Azarbaijan and the eastern province of Khorasan, so that these three mills can be taken as typical. Such uniformity in performance is characteristic for machinery developed over many centuries by craftsmen to an optimal upper limit. The waterhead is 8 m. (24 feet) for one of the mills and 5 m. (15 feet) for the other two. All the mills are working in conjunction with an irrigation scheme, so that the water passes the mills before it is let by the water bailiff onto the fields. In good seasons with ample water