In issue 51, we had noted in an article on Agostino Ramelli’s 16th-century book wheel that “at least one contemporary scholar has suggested that the gearing depicted in this image from ‘Le diverse et artificiose machine’ would actually not have functioned in the way that Ramelli claimed, causing the books to fall to the floor rather than holding them in place.” Soon after the issue was released, we received an email from author Joshua Foer disputing this claim, citing as evidence a functional Ramelli wheel that he was building in his woodshop. Looking further into this, we discovered that the original claim, made by A. G. Keller in his book “A Theatre of Machines,” had in fact been disputed by others as well, most persuasively by Bert Hall in his 1970 article “A Revolving Bookcase by Agostino Ramelli” in “Technology and Culture.” Josh has in fact now finished the wheel and he refutes Keller thus:
Posted on: Mon, 19 May 2014 18:24:18 +0000
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