Preface

...[to be] done: Indeed, there is almost no trade or craft so lowly or simple that it could not make use of this art with great advantage and benefit.

Because I have observed—Honorable, Respectable, Highly Learned, High and Wise, and Greatly-Favoring Gentlemen—the exceedingly great utility of this art in both public and private affairs original: "Publicis vnd privatis actionibus", I firmly believed that I could not better spend my time than by undertaking, for the benefit of the common good, to make this art of machination the design and construction of mechanical devices more common. I have therefore collected its subtle and useful inventions original: "Inventiones" into a specific book and arranged for it to be publicly printed, so that craftsmen—primarily stonemasons, masons, joiners, carpenters, and the like—may obtain good instruction and a certain foundation therefrom, and may use the swift advantages of the art for their own benefit.

I was greatly moved to do this by the praiseworthy intention of Mr. Henning Gross the Younger—citizen and bookseller of this place, and my favorable good friend—who has spared no expense to establish a copperplate printing press a specialized workshop for printing detailed illustrations from engraved copper plates, rather than simple woodcuts here, so that this famous city, in which all good arts and virtues otherwise...