The Various and Ingenious Machines

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Mecanica Mechanical art, which first began to discover to the world the manner of cultivating the fields, and of subjecting to the yoke, for plowing the earth, the horse and the ox: after it taught us to attach now two, and now four of them to carts; and by pulling, to have them led from our borders to the extreme shores of the earth; and from those countries to ours, victuals, merchandise, and other immeasurable weights, such as stones, beams, trees, and similar things that are used by joiners, marble-workers, and architects in their activities. But why do I speak of the industry and great subtlety of this Mechanical art, since it itself has taught us to push great ships with the oar alone, and with the yardarm raised on high to spread sails to make them go most velociously through the blowing of the winds? This effect is born simply from the lieua lever; being that the same yardarm, or mast of the ship, becomes a lever; which is supported by the heel, or by the place where it is planted: the weight that has to be moved is the ship itself: and the motor is the breath of the winds that inflate the sails. In the end, with a small rudder placed in the extreme stern, it makes them bend and turn where we please, or rather steer the great masses of the galleys: as also by means of it, in the manner of a pump, gardeners draw the icy waters from deep wells to irrigate the herbs. The merchant cannot exercise his trade without Arithmetica Arithmetic, which is a species of the Mathematics: which, being a science of discrete quantity, and as known by itself, considers numbers even or odd, without comparing them to anything else. Without Geodosia Geodesy/Surveying, which also depends on the Mathematics, how could we measure the amplitude of plains, the height of mountains, the lowness of the earth, the width and length of any created thing whatsoever? Who can, without the aid of pure Mathematics, comprehend and determine the size of the celestial bodies with their heights and distances? Who is capable of considering without it the centers, the axes, the poles, and the lines of each rotating Heaven? Or examine the reason they have in the center, axes, lines, and poles of the supremo mobile the highest sphere of the heavens? Who makes one contemplate the diameters of the stars, their longitudes, and the distances from one to the other?