Tra utopia e realtà: visioni e pre-visioni nelle Machinae Novae di Fausto Veranzio. Parte prima: un “ingegnere” del Rinascimento

Fausto Veranzio (Faust Vrančić, 1551–1617) humanist, philosopher and Dalmatian historian, known for its Dictionarium Quinque Nobilissimarum Europae linguarum, Latinae, Italicae, Germanicae, Dalmaticae et Ungaricae (Veranzio 1595) and Logica Nova (Veranzio, 1616) was, curiously, a forerunner of the Machine revolution, that will own the revolution of science and technical progress during the Industrial Revolution. Trained at the University of Padua also in mathematics, lover of science and the progress of mechanics and engineering, he publishes in 1616 a “visionary” treaty, where instead his visions will translate in actually built. His treatise on Machinae Novae (Veranzio, 1616) is anticipating scientific and technological advances that will find fertile ground in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.