August 17, 2009
1579: THE PRECURSOR OF THE AUTOMOBILE & THE FUNDAMENTALS OF THE TELEGRAPH
PRINTED 1579: 43 FULL PAGE WOODCUTS
ONE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE ENGINEERING TREATISES OF THE 16th CENTURY
Isacchi, Giovanni Baptista. Inventioni, nelle quali si manifestano varij secreti, e utili avisi a persone di guerra, e per it tempi di piacere.Parma : appresso Seth Viotto, 1579. Signatures: a-b4,A-Y4,Z2. Title vignette (publisher’s device mirroring colophon) Description: [16], 170, [10] p. : ill., port. ; 19.5 cm. (4to), first blank flyleaf loose, t.p. with small marginal repair, dampstain affecting a-b4. Early Italian mottled boards. 43 full-page woodcut illustrations cut with thick black line. Overall, a COMPLETE and handsome copy. Ref: Mortimer 242.
This work certainly stands as one of the most remarkable 16th century illustrated works of engineering. It primarily contains inventions 50 inventions and ‘secrets’ related to weapons and firearms, fireworks and other mechanical contraptions. The book is well known for its strikingly early description of the “horseless carriage”: “Far caminare una Carrozza senza Cavalli, ma con industria di Ruote ò Molinelli”. “Isacchi da Reggio in his Inventioni 1579, a very rare volume, describes and illustrates in great detail a means of propelling a carriage without horses by means of the hand labour of four persons applied to spoke-wheels; he gives instructions for making the steering-gear and proposes to run at the rate of two miles per hour [Ref: Hodgkin , John Eliot. Rariora: being notes of some of the printed books, manuscripts, historical …1902]
The work also explores modern day principles behind the telegraph with a machine (p.59) that codes and transmits letters and words over distances.
Finally, the book holds an important, yet overlooked part in the history of theater with descriptions of devices used in contemporary festivities and theatrical productions. Isacchi, born at Reggio Emilia, is in fact recorded as being in charge of the decorations for festivals in Bologna, Mantua, Novellara and Reggio before becoming chief artilleryman for Duke Alfonso II of Mantua.
