Articles
The 10,000 volumes that the IMechE library and archive accumulated by 1899 form the basis of its historical collections. They include a book with fold-out plates showing the Eiffel Tower’s construction and the full catalogue for the Great Exhibition of 1851, with photographic plates.
The library’s oldest title, Theatrum Instrumentorum et Machinarum (Theatre of Instruments and Machines), dates back to 1578. It is an early example of a genre of literature that appeared in Europe in the late 16th century, called Theatre of New Machines. Believed to have been influenced by the unpublished notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, it took the form of handbooks that detailed the workings of machines and instruments in pictorial as well as descriptive form. In many ways these were the first handbooks of mechanical engineering.
The authors of many of these books copied one another, building on each other’s ideas. Some of the volumes were outlandish and offered designs that would not translate well to reality, such as Agostino Ramelli’s huge weight-driven clockwork mill mechanism that was supposed to be able to be rewound by one small boy.
Theatre of Instruments and Machines was written by Jacques Besson. Besson, born around 1540 in Briançon, near Grenoble in France, originally worked as a maths teacher. When King Charles IX of France made a royal visit to Orléans in 1569, Besson presented to the king a draft of his new treatise, which was to become the Theatrum Instrumentorum. He returned with the king to Paris as “Master of the King’s Engines”. At court, Besson created an ingenious screw-cutting lathe that was semi-automatic, in that the operator only needed to pull and release a cord.
Written in French, Theatre of Instruments and Machines was first published in 1571 and includes numerous designs and descriptions of contraptions that Besson believed could be built. It also contains 60 engravings made to Besson’s specifications by Jacques Androuet du Cerceau. These include measuring and drawing instruments, lathes, elevators, pumps, and lots more.
Many of these designs were later used to produce the original plans for the machines. The mathematical instruments in Besson’s book usually took the form of a complex system of pulleys, but they led the way for the astronomical, surveying and timekeeping instruments that came later.
Besson had published two books before Theatre of Instruments – De Absoluta Ratione Extrahendi Olea et Aquas e Medicamentis Simplicibus (On the Complete Doctrine of Extracting Oils and Waters from Simple Drugs, 1559) and Le Cosmolabe (1567), which described an elaborate instrument that could be used for navigation, surveying, cartography and astronomy.
Besson left France after the crackdown on Protestants in 1572. He emigrated to England and died there shortly afterwards. A new edition of Theatre of Instruments was published in 1578, with new descriptions by François Béroalde de Verville and four replacement engravings by René Boyvin. This is the edition held by the IMechE.
This book and a wealth of other items relating to the history of engineering, including papers, records, drawings and artefacts, are available in our collection for researchers to view by appointment. You can also look at thousands of items online in the Virtual Archive. See: https://archives.imeche.org/