HERO of Alexandria De gli Automati overo Machine se moventi

Sale 2190 - Lot 110

Price Realized: $ 1,353

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Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 2,000

HERO of Alexandria. De gli Automati, overo Machine se moventi, libri due. 22 engraved and woodcut illustrations, including 6 full-page. 47, [1] leaves, including engraved title and final blank. Small 4to, 19th-century 1/2 vellum; contents toned with scattered foxing, upper margins trimmed entering some headlines, last few leaves chipped along top edge affecting headlines, minor restoration at top of last leaf. Venice: Giro. Battista Bertoni, 1601

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Second edition of Hero's Automata, a 1st-century A.D. treatise on mechanical toy theatrical displays, which first appeared in 1589 in Bernardino Baldi's Italian translation with an introduction by Baldi on the history of mechanics. The Greek original text was first published in 1693. "The accounts of these automata are interesting as introducing for the first time mechanisms that formed the basis of later machines. Among them are the crank, the camshaft, and systems of rotation with counter-weights"--Singer II, 634-36. DSB VI, 312-33, and I, 419; Hoffmann II, 218; Riccardi I, 67; Sarton I, 209.