(MACHINES, ENGINEERING: ILLUSTRATED) JACQUES BESSON (1540-1573), JACQUES I ANDROUET DU CERCEAU (1510-1584), FRANÇOIS BÉROALDE DE VERVILLE (1555-1612), GIULIO CESARE PASCHALI (1527-1601/1602) Il theatro de gl’Instrumenti & Machine di M. Iacopo Bessoni, Mathematico de’ nostri tempi eccellentissimo, con una brieve necessaria dichiaration dimostrativa, di M. Francesco Beroaldo Sù tutte le Figure, che vi son comprese, nuovamente di Latino in volgare Italiano tradotto & di moltissime Additioni per tutto aummentato & illustrato pel Signor Giulio Paschali Messinese. In Lione, per Barth. Vincenti, 1582. § 4to, (423x282 mm.); 64 pp. signature: A-Q1-4. Title within large woodcut allegorical frame, 60 engraved full-page illustrations. Contemporary half-vellum. Fine copy on large paper. First Italian edition. Previously published in Latin in 1578; a previous work, with the title Livre premier des instruments mathematiques, et méchaniques ... was published around 1571, with illustrations by the well-known designer Jacques I Androuet du Cerceau. This first work contained little more than illustrations and their captions and was in all evidence hastely completed: shortly after the religious intolerance culminated in the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre and Besson, a Protestant, flied to England were he died the following year. His work had obtained by the French king Charles IX exclusive rights “tant en la peinture qu'en la fabrique” (over both the design and the realisation of the machines), the first occurrence of a privilege protecting the intellectual property of inventions. The first edition of the Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum was published posthumously, with the addition of a brief description of each machine by François Béroalde de Verville and with all but four (replaced by new engravings by René Boyvin) of the original copper plates. Besson’s work was the first one where no war machines were described. “... engineer whose improvements in the lathe were of great importance in the development of the machine-tool industry and of scientific instrumentation. Besson’s designs, published in his illustrated treatise Theatrum instrumentorum (1569), introduced cams and templates (patterns used to guide the form of a piece being made) to the screw-cutting lathe, thus increasing the operator’s mechanical control of tool and workpiece and permitting the production of more accurate and intricate work in metal. He also improved the drive and feed mechanism of the ornamental lathe and described a more efficient form of waterwheel, considered a prototype of the water turbine.” (Britannica). “The Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum is the work of Jacques Besson, “the most ingenious mathematician of the Delfinate”, and saw the light with this title in Lyon in 1578, but a first edition entitled “Livre premier des instruments mathematiques, et méchaniques, servant à intelligence de plusieurs choses difficulties et necessaires à toutes Republiques” was printed perhaps shortly after 1569. In this work, alongside “mathematical” instruments such as compasses and rulers, machine tools, lathes and mills and many other animal-propelled machines are presented. hydraulics, whose brief descriptions in Latin bear the signature of Francesco Beroaldo (cum Francisci Beroaldi figurarum declaratione demonstratiua). An Italian translation of Besson's Theatrum is printed by Barthélemy Vincent in Lyons in 1582 (Il theatro de gl’instrumenti et machine di M. Iacopo Bessoni, mathematico de’ nostri tempi eccellentissimo, con una brieve necessaria dichiaration dimonstrativa, di M. Francesco Beroaldo su tutte le figure, che vi son comprese, nuovamente di Latino in volgare Italiano tradotto et di moltissime additioni per tutto aummentato et illustrato pel signor Giulio Paschali Messinese) and this very book, accompanied by the fame of its author, contributes to the spread of this literary genre in our country (in Italy)”. The translation from Latin into Italian is by the humanist and translator Giulio Cesare Paschali, a Sicilian Protestant who fled to Geneva, a city where also Besson had lived for whlile, obtaining the citizenship. Ref: VITTORIO MARCHIS I teatri delle macchine In: Il Contributo italiano alla storia del Pensiero - Tecnica, 2013 (https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/i-teatri-delle-macchine_%28Il-Contributo-italiano-alla-storia-del-Pensiero:-Tecnica%29/); Encyclopedia Britannica; A.G. KELLER A theatre of machines London, Chapman & Hall, 1964; PIETRO GIULIO RIGA, Paschali, Giulio Cesare In: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani.