Book wheels
Earlier today I was trying to remember the source of a 16th-century
engraving of a reading machine — a giant wheel that could hold
multiple books at once and allow a reader to rotate from one book to
another. I’d seen it in multiple places (reproduced in one of the
essays in The Renaissance Computer, for one), but I couldn’t remember
who made the image in the first place. But a quick check of Google
Images reminded me that it’s an illustration from Agostino Ramelli’s Le
diverse et artificiose machine, a 1588 treatise on mechanical
engineering. Another spin through Google led me to this exhibit, from the Smithsonian Institution’s Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology, which I’d love to visit someday when I’ve gotten my potential dissertation-meets-library-science research project off the ground.
Most of the machines pictured in this book are for lifting and dragging things (Ronald Brashear’s introductory essay
for the Dibner Library exhibit lists "110 Water-raising machines, 21 Grain
mills, 4 Other mills, 10 Cranes, 7 Machines for dragging large
objects" among the illustrations — though there are also "4 Fountains and artificial bird-calls"). There’s only the one reading
machine. The book wheel has caught a lot of people’s attention, though;
witness this post at Earmarks in Early Modern Culture,
a blog I didn’t know about before today, but am looking forward to
reading more of. Kristine at Earmarks notes the
similarities between Ramelli’s book wheel and hypertext, while drawing
another connection with digital paper.
Personally — maybe because I
have so many Firefox tabs open as I write this — I think of tabbed web
browsing as one of the modern counterparts of the book wheel. Who says
multitasking is an invention of the 20th century? Thomas Jefferson, at least, wouldn’t have thought so. He invented a book wheel of his own — more of a book lazy-susan, actually (not to mention being an early adopter of the hipster PDA).
The Smithsonian’s other online exhibits are also worth checking out. I’m going to be in DC at the end of the month on a whirlwind weekend operagoing trip (Clemenza di Tito, hooray!). I may drag my travel companion to the Smithsonian when we’re not basking in Mozartian glory.
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