TY - JOUR
AU - Considine, John
AB - The bookwheel, on which geared or weighted lecterns extend between two wheels revolving on a horizontal axis, so that the user can bring one book after another into view by turning the wheels, first appears in a theatre of machines called Le diverse et artificiose machine del Capitano Agostino Ramelli, published in 1588. In a recent account of Ramelli’s invention and its practical applications, I presented evidence for twenty-seven extant or well-attested bookwheels, dating from the 1650s to the 1790s, the majority of them in German-speaking Europe, and proposed that they generally appeared to have been constructed as impressive catalogue stands or the like rather than to assist scholarly reading.1 When John Ray was in Rome in December 1664, he saw a machine constructed on the same principle in the Musaeum Kircherianum, his report of which was first published in 2014. It expands, and adds a twist to, the story of the bookwheel. This is what he said: We observed A Round case of desks full of ancient coynes. This case is of the fashion of an hour-glasse, moving upon 2 poles at the center of the 2 wheels at the ends into which the Desks are fix’t, so, that turning round, every Desk (on which the medals lie) is kept parallel to itself alwaies. The like engine I have seen in other places to lay bookes on, convenient for them who are to use many bookes at the same time.2 The same machine was mentioned in Giorgio de Sepi’s account of the museum, published in 1678, as a ‘rotating case comprising six shelves in which coins of the Twelve Caesars are kept’, devised ‘with extraordinary ingenuity’.3 It evidently reminded Ray of the sort of hour-glass which has a circular wooden base and top, with wooden rods running between them to give extra protection to the glass itself—but it was an hour-glass turned on its side, and with shelves rather than rods running between the wheels at either end. Each shelf was probably ‘kept parallel to itself’, or rather, kept at a constant angle to the ground, by epicyclic gearing rather than weighting, the norm in seventeenth-century bookwheels, and strongly suggested by de Sepi’s reference to ‘extraordinary ingenuity’. Ray’s account is worth having as the earliest evidence from the Italian peninsula for a piece of furniture constructed on the bookwheel principle, and as new evidence for the use of such a piece of furniture to support objects for display, rather than books. The fact that he had seen such pieces in use, or available for use, as supports for books in more than one other place (perhaps on his German travels) is evidence for their proliferation by the 1660s, though the care with which he described this one, and the special attention drawn to it by de Sepi, show that they were far from commonplace. And it is most interesting that Ray identified such machines explicitly as ‘convenient for them who are to use many bookes at the same time’. Ramelli had likewise said that ‘with such a machine, a man can see and turn over a large number of books without moving from one spot’, but it is one thing to see those words written by a proud inventor to accompany a picture, and it is another to have them as the testimony of someone who was used to scholarly work, and had been observing real bookwheels.4 Footnotes 1 John Considine, ‘The Ramellian Bookwheel’, Erudition and the Republic of Letters i (2016), 381–411. 2 Edited in Michael Hunter, ‘John Ray in Italy: Lost Manuscripts Rediscovered’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society lxviii (2014), 93–109, at 102. 3 Giorgio de Sepi, Romani collegii societatis Jesu musaeum celeberrimum (Amsterdam, 1678), 48, ‘Pluteus Versatilis VI tabulis constans in quibus Numismata conservantur XII Caesarum’ and ‘raro artificio’. 4 Ramelli, Diverse et artificiose machine (Paris, 1588), fo. 316r, ‘con questa sorte di machina, l’huomo può uedere & riuoltare una gran quantità di libri, senza mouersi d’un luogo’. © The Author(s) (2022). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model) © The Author(s) (2022). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com
TI - John Ray on Bookwheels
JO - Notes and Queries
DO - 10.1093/notesj/gjac103
DA - 2022-09-19
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/john-ray-on-bookwheels-Ifzr0VVtcc
SP - 304
EP - 305
VL - 69
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -