The Mechanical Tradition of Hero of Alexandria

The Mechanical Tradition of Hero of Alexandria PDF Author: Courtney Ann Roby
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009033867
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
Hero of Alexandria was a figure of great importance not only for ancient technology but also for the medieval and early modern traditions that drew on his work. In this book Courtney Roby presents Hero's key strategies for developing, solving, and contextualizing technical problems, not only in his own lifetime but as an influential tradition of creating accessible technical treatises spanning multiple disciplines. While Hero's historical biography is all but impossible to reconstruct, she examines “Hero” as a corpus, a textual tradition of technical problem-solving capable of incorporating textual transformations like interpolation, epitomization, and translation, as well as intermedial transformation from text to artifact. Key themes include ancient and early modern technical readerships, the relationship between mathematics and mechanics, the materiality of manuscript and printed texts, and the shifting cultural contexts for scientific and technical literature.

The Mechanical Tradition of Hero of Alexandria

The Mechanical Tradition of Hero of Alexandria PDF Author: Courtney Ann Roby
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316516237
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
The first book on Hero, a key figure in the history of technology in antiquity and the early modern period.

The Pneumatics of Hero of Alexandria

The Pneumatics of Hero of Alexandria PDF Author: Hero (of Alexandria.)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description


The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Science

The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Science PDF Author: Liba Taub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107092485
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
Provides a broad framework for engaging with ideas relevant to ancient Greek and Roman science, medicine and technology.

The Mechanical Hypothesis in Ancient Greek Natural Philosophy

The Mechanical Hypothesis in Ancient Greek Natural Philosophy PDF Author: Sylvia Berryman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113948026X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
It has long been thought that the ancient Greeks did not take mechanics seriously as part of the workings of nature, and that therefore their natural philosophy was both primitive and marginal. In this book Sylvia Berryman challenges that assumption, arguing that the idea that the world works 'like a machine' can be found in ancient Greek thought, predating the early modern philosophy with which it is most closely associated. Her discussion ranges over topics including balancing and equilibrium, lifting water, sphere-making and models of the heavens, and ancient Greek pneumatic theory, with detailed analysis of thinkers such as Aristotle, Archimedes, and Hero of Alexandria. Her book shows scholars of ancient Greek philosophy why it is necessary to pay attention to mechanics, and shows historians of science why the differences between ancient and modern reactions to mechanics are not as great as was generally thought.

A History of Mechanical Inventions

A History of Mechanical Inventions PDF Author: Abbott Payson Usher
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 9780486255934
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
This revised and updated classic explores the importance of technological innovation in the cultural and economic history of the West. Topics include technology of textile manufacture from primitive times, water wheels and wind mills, clocks and watches, and invention of printing. "Without peer in its field." — American Scientist.

Technical Ekphrasis in Greek and Roman Science and Literature

Technical Ekphrasis in Greek and Roman Science and Literature PDF Author: Courtney Roby
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107077303
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
This book analyzes the rhetorical and visual strategies used in technical texts and non-technical literature to describe technological artifacts.

Renaissance Fun

Renaissance Fun PDF Author: Philip Steadman
Publisher: UCL Press
ISBN: 1787359158
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
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.

Distinguished Figures in Mechanism and Machine Science

Distinguished Figures in Mechanism and Machine Science PDF Author: Marco Ceccarelli
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9401789479
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
This book is composed of chapters that focus specifically on technological developments by distinguished figures in the history of MMS (Mechanism and Machine Science). Biographies of well-known scientists are also included to describe their efforts and experiences and surveys of their work and achievements and a modern interpretation of their legacy are presented. After the first two volumes, the papers in this third volume again cover a wide range within the field of the History of Mechanical Engineering with specific focus on MMS and will be of interest and motivation to the work (historical or not) of many.

Surveying Instruments of Greece and Rome

Surveying Instruments of Greece and Rome PDF Author: M. J. T. Lewis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521792975
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
A comprehensive account of ancient surveying instruments together with translations of all the ancient sources.

A History of the Growth of the Steam-engine

A History of the Growth of the Steam-engine PDF Author: Robert Henry Thurston
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Steam-engines
Languages : en
Pages : 522

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Book Description