Engineering and technology

[FERRACINO]. MEMMO, Francesco. Vita e Macchine di Bartolomeo Ferracino celebre Bassanese ingegnere colla storia del Ponte di Bassano dal medesimo rifabbricato … Venice, Stamperia Remondini, 1754.

£1250

An excellent copy, bound in contemporary vellum over boards, of the first edition of Memmo’s biography of the famous Bassano engineer, Bartolomeo Ferracino.

Bartolomeo Ferracino (also Ferracina, 1692-1777) early earned a reputation for his skills as a clockmaker. Together with the famous physicist and mathematician Giovanni Poleni they built various machines for use in physics classes at Padua University.

Ferracino was ‘interested in machinery from his earliest years, his first invention being a wind-powered saw. Interest in horology and automata produced the well-known clock at St. Mark's in Venice. The most outstanding of his inventions was his Hydraulic Machine which lifted water thirty-five feet from the River Brenta. Because of his fame as an engineer, Ferracino was asked to reconstruct the city bridge of Bassano’ (Roberts & Trent, Bibliotheca Mechanica, 115).