A Brief illustrated history of machines and mechanisms

Abstract

Machines have always gone hand-in-hand with the cultural development of man- kind throughout time. A book on the history of machines is nothing more than a specific way of bringing light to human events as a whole in order to highlight some significant milestones in the progress of knowledge by a complementary perspec- tive into a general historical overview. This book is the result of common efforts and interests by several scholars, teachers, and students on subjects that are connected with the theory of machines and mechanisms. In fact, in this book there is a certain teaching aim in addition to a general historical view that is more addressed to the achievements by “homo faber” than to those by “homo sapiens”, since the proposed history survey has been developed with an engineering approach.