BOCKLER, Georg Andreas

Theatrum Machinarum Novum

Coloniae Agrippinae: Sumptibus Pauli Principis, 1662

First edition in latin, following the German edition of 1661.

Folio. 154 full-page plates.

Contemporary stiff vellum.

Georg Andreas Bockler was the city engineer for Nuremburg in the mid-17th century. He published several profusely illustrated books on mills, water works, and other technological marvels. These books are representative of the so-called "theaters of machines" that were immensely popular during the renaissance. The Theatrum Machinarum Novum contains more than 100 full page plates of mills and other machines driven by water, animal, wind, and human power, not a few of which are fanciful imaginings of perpetual motion machines.

Georg Andreas Bockler, Theatrum Machinarum Novum, Cologne 1662.

A perpetual water mill ( from Theatrum Machinarum Novum, Cologne 1662).

This figure illustrates a classic scheme for a perpetual motion machine, in which the overshot water wheel not only powers a grindstone but also an Archimedes screw that returns the water to the reservoir driving the wheel. Without a rigorous science of physics and mechanics, anchored by the principle of conservation of energy, even the most respected engineers of the renaissance saw no impediment to the possibility of perpetual motion machines. Bockler illustrates and discusses this device with the same objectivity as the more prosaic and functionally practical mills shown throughout the book.