De Cochlea Libri Quatuor

MONTE, Guidobaldo, Marchese Del

Published by Evangelisto Deuchino, Venice, 1615

About this Item

THE THEORY OF THE ARCHIMEDEAN SCREW - THE MACCLESFIELD COPY. First edition, the Macclesfield copy, of this very rare and important work of Renaissance engineering and mathematics, Guidobaldo s analysis of the theory and operation of Archimedes most famous mechanical invention, the cochlea or Archimedean screw . This is a device used for raising water consisting of a helical tube wound around the outside of a cylinder; when the cylinder is inclined at an angle to the horizontal and the lower end of the tube is placed in water, rotating the cylinder causes water to be raised through the tube and ejected from the top. The Archimedean screw, and other variants of it, is still in use today; it is also used in reverse to generate hydraulic power (when water is poured into the tube at the top it causes the screw to rotate). The first to correctly explain the functioning of the Archimedean screw was Galileo: in Le meccaniche (written around 1600 but not published until 1634), he wrote that "the screw-pump is not only marvellous, but it is miraculous ( non solo è meravigliosa, ma è miracolosa ), because in the screw-pump the water ascends by continually descending" (Koetsier & Blauwendraat, p. 188). But De Cochlea is the first printed account of how the screw-pump actually works. "The four books on the cochlea by Guido Ubaldo del Monte (1545-1607) are almost unknown to scholars who studied Archimedes machine (perhaps due to the fact that the author used the Latin language in the few copies that were printed and to the different ways in which the author s name has been spelled over time) … Galileo himself requested a copy of it from Guido Ubaldo" (Magnini & Molari). Guidobaldo s analysis of the Archimedean screw was not improved upon until the 18th century, when calculus methods (invented by Newton half a century after the publication of De cochlea) were applied to the problem by Daniel Bernoulli in Hydrodynamica (1738) and by Leonhard Euler in his paper De cochlea Archimedis (Novi Commentarii academiae scientiarum Petropolitanae 5 (1760), pp. 259-298). "Guidobaldo was Galileo s patron and friend for twenty years and was possibly the greatest single influence on the mechanics of Galileo" (DSB). Guidobaldo was also influential in securing appointments for Galileo, first at Pisa and then Padua. Together they conducted a series of experiments on the trajectories of cannonballs, asserting that projectiles follow parabolic paths. "After [Federico] Commandino s death in 1575, the commitment to the restoration of Greek mathematics was carried on by his disciples Guidobaldo dal Monte and Bernardino Baldi, to whom he had taught mathematics from about 1568" (Frank). According to Stillman Drake (p. 35), Guidobaldo was writing De Cochlea in the early 1590s: "In September 1593 Guidobaldo wrote an invitation to Galileo to visit him at Monte Baroccio … His patron wanted to show him a book on perspective he had written but not yet published … Guidobaldo was also writing a book on the Archimedean screw; this was probably related to a patent Galileo obtained in September 1594 on a device for raising water by horse power." However, Guidobaldo s book on the screw-pump was not published until after his death more than a decade later, by his son Orazio. ABPC/RBH list no other copy in a contemporary binding since the Honeyman sale in 1978. Provenance: The Earls of Macclesfield (South Library bookplate on front pastedown, small embossed stamp to first three leaves); sold Sotheby s, April 14, 2005, lot 1439, £2,880 ($5,461). The Archimedean screw is one of the oldest machines still in use. "The earliest representation of a water-screw is on a fresco from the Casa di P. Cornelius Teges in Pompeii, obviously dating from before 79 AD. On the fresco an individual is moving a cylinder with his feet in a landscape that is allegedly Egyptian. Because water comes out of the cylinder it is generally assumed it must be a water-screw. From the imperial period we. Seller Inventory # 5425

Bibliographic Details

Title: De Cochlea Libri Quatuor

Publisher: Evangelisto Deuchino, Venice

Publication Date: 1615

Edition: First edition.