GALILEI, Galileo. Della Scienza Mecanica e delle Vtilita, Che si traggono da gl'Instromenti di quella Opera Cavata da manoscritti ...
Ravenna: Stamp. Camerali, 1649.

Rare first edition in the original Italian of Galileo’s early treatise on mechanics, a precursor to the research that he would present in his Discorsi. This popular treatise, widely circulated in manuscript form, is effectively a “bridge between statics and dynamics,” and according to Drake, “far superior to other available works on the subject” (Galileo on Motion and Mechanics, p. 137).

“Galileo presents… the analysis of simple machines… in an unusual way. He is justly celebrated in this tract for his use and explication of the principle of virtual velocities” (Clagett in Drake, viii). Incorporating elements from Aristotle, Archimedes, Pappus, Philoponus, Jordanus and others, Della Scienza Mecanica offers “a coherent and illuminating exposition of the foundations of mechanics.” Drake explains that while little of the content of Della Scienza Mecanica found its way into the Discorsi (with the exception of a discussion of the lever, Galileo omitted the time-honored topic of simple machines, choosing to emphasize his newer findings on dynamics), the Scienza shows “unmistakable novelty,” and represents an important stepping stone in Galileo’s intellectual development; early investigations into conservation of energy and the principle of inertia can be traced here.

Della Scienza Mecanica is based on a series of lectures on aspects of statics and of simple machines delivered by Galileo for his pupils at Padua in the 1590s. In Drake’s estimation, the text was most unlikely to have been revised after 1608, and thus “its essential content may be considered to have followed very shortly after the composition of De Motu” (ibid p. 137). The work remained unpublished until Marin Mersenne produced a French-language paraphrase of the original manuscript in Paris in 1634, Les Méchaniques de Galilée. Shortly thereafter, in 1636, Robert Payne worked from a manuscript copy to translate the Scienza into English, but this was never published; Thomas Salusbury published a new translation in 1665 in his Mathematical Collections and Translations. Luca Danesi was the first to prepare the original Italian text for publication, and his edition of the Scienza would be included in all subsequent collections of Galileo’s works (the Bolognese Dozza Opere of 1655, etc.).

Danesi (1598-1672) was variously an architect, engineer, writer, lawyer, and mathematician. He designed the churches of S. Romualdo in Ravenna and S. Marie dei Teatini in Ferrara, both dating from c. 1630. The “Trattato di mecaniche” was reprinted as a separately paginated section at the end of Danesi’s Opere (Ferrara, Bolzoni, 1670), which also includes a tract on practical geometry and one on bridges, as well as an analysis of the Tiber River floods.

OCLC lists CalTech, Iowa, and l’Institut de France. A sole copy of Danesi’s 1670 Opera is listed at CalTech.

Cinti 121; Riccardi I.517.161 and Danesi I.388.1; Carli-Favaro 227; Houzeau-Lancaster 3386 (1655 ed.); Gamba 479; Sotheran, First Suppl. 3157; not in Bibliotheca Mechanica, which had only the reprint in the 1655 Dozza Opera.

4to: 230 x 155. 8, 63 pp., with woodcuts throughout. Bound in later carta rustica. A very clean and large copy. Rare.