Preface.

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A decorative woodcut initial 'E' featuring a female figure holding a flaming heart in her left hand and a staff or anchor in her right, surrounded by ornate scrollwork and a sunburst in the upper right corner. In 18th-century art, the flaming heart often symbolizes "Ardor" or intense zeal for a subject, while the anchor represents "Firmness" or hope—qualities Leupold likely felt were necessary for the study of mechanics.

Every part of this book, like all the parts that follow, is titled a Theater original: "Theatrum". This is partly because within it—as if on a public stage—not only the foundations original: "Fundamenta" and principles of mechanics are set before everyone’s eyes through diagrams and figures, but also through descriptions and fundamental explanations of many machines and instruments, so that anyone may observe them at their leisure as if at a public theater. Furthermore, I have chosen this word Theater because various books dealing with machines are already well-known to many under this title.

However, it is called a General Theater of Machines original: "Theatrum Machinarum generale", or a Stage of the Foundations of Mechanical Sciences, because it primarily teaches almost all the rules, laws, and advantages that serve not only the invention, but also the construction, assessment, and use of machines and instruments. To know these things is essential, and yet this is exactly what has been lacking among most mechanics who have invented machines until now. Consequently, new artists and "master-inventors" appear every day who claim to perform nothing but miracles. They claim to exercise "force without force," or to do as much with one pound as others do with two, or to achieve with one horse what usually requires two. Indeed, even perpetual motion original: "Perpetuum mobile" is a mere trifle to them.

But all this foolishness and "wind-making" An 18th-century term for bluster or empty talk. arises simply from this: because such people have no foundation Foundation: Leupold refers to the mathematical and physical principles—what we now call classical mechanics—that govern how machines actually work. and do not know how to calculate force, load, and time. For this very reason, so many "monstrosities" of machines have been created, and so many books filled with them, which have often cost not only their inventors but also others who wished to imitate them their property, their goods, and even their entire reputations.