New Releases by Frank D

On Engines,dated 1433, is an early and previously unknown treatise on engineering which was prepared for King Sigismund''s arrival in Siena as he traveled to Rome for rites of coronation. Mariano Taccola has been described as a designer of military devices, but the drawings and texts of De ingeneisshow his interest in the field of technology to encompass far more than the machines of attack and defense. He deals actively, at times creatively, with bridges and their foundations, with harbors, harbor equipment for the loading of freight, aqueducts both above and below ground, equipment for operating the wells at the end of an aqueduct, mill houses, and the machines and power plants associated with them. The numerous figures and landscapes that accompany his texts also reveal Taccola to be an interesting and original Sienese artist. He portrays human figures in situations that seldom appear in the major arts, and the nature studies among the vignettes beside his texts are distinctive to his art. As in a previous study of Brunelleschi''s technology and inventions (MIT Press 1970), the authors represent different viewpoints in their analysis—Frank Prager, the history of technology, and Gustina Scaglia, the history of art. Together they have transcribed and translated the Latin texts and indicated the original form of De ingeneisfrom manuscripts in two libraries. They have summarized as much as is known about Taccola, whose work earned him the name of "the Sienese Archimedes," and have evaluated his achievements as writer, graphic artist, and engineer. The drawings and descriptions of the four books of De ingeneisare presented clearly and concisely, to inform and to teach. For it was about Taccola''s time, and with his help, that the long stagnation of many technical practices of the Middle Ages came to an end, and De ingeneisbecame the starting point for a long line of copybooks. Taccola, unlike his predecessors, was particularly interested in describing or suggesting classes of machines, their common parts and basic functions or general rules. He was moved to experiment with different forms of cross-reference between chapters and to develop various means of illustration, using at times a distinct and original method of balancing drawings, texts, and the marginal vignettes used to identify each illustration. Although Mariano Taccola''s work was soon surpassed, his manuscripts were copied throughout the fifteenth century as textbooks, and their rediscovery provides invaluable source material for studying the early, transitional history of mechanical technology and adds a new dimension to the history of Quattrocento art.

"Basic experimental parameters associated with using laser speckle correlation fringes to measure in-plane strain have been investigated. Equations and inequalities are derived which provide bounding numbers for many of the physical parameters. The feasibility of employing this technique for obtaining in-plane strain data in a microscopic region is shown. This suggests that it may be applicable for studying strain distributions in the vicinity of either a crack or an interference fit fastener." -- Abstract.

In the late eighteenth century, Pittoo Fernandes and his immediate family, along with about 70,000 other Catholic Christians are taken prisoner from their native Mangalore and surrounding areas by the armies of Tippu Sultan of Mysore, and transported to the capital Srirangapatna, with almost a third of these prisoners dying en route due to illness, hunger, gross ill-treatment and torture. It was the Ruler’s intention that the whole community be exterminated, for what he considered high treason committed by members of the community, and the whole community was to be punished for it. Pittoo, an ex-seminarian, escapes from captivity after about six years’ incarceration, and though meek and very timid by nature, having had led a sheltered life till then, has to face the unforgiving and demanding realities of the savage and real world. Pittoo, being the last of his immediate family in captivity and after his escape, with the threat hanging over him of his feet and one hand being amputated if caught and brought back, has to use every bit of ingenuity, innovating and improvising to stay free and not be taken back into bondage. Dogged determination and his basic, survival instincts, coupled with absolutely raw courage, which he did not even know that he possessed, is all what he can fall back on, to take him further away from certain torture and death, and onward to freedom.