Renaissance technology

Renaissance technology was the set of European artifacts and inventions which spread through the Renaissance period, roughly the 14th century through the 16th century. The era is marked by profound technical advancements such as the printing press, linear perspective in drawing, patent law, double shell domes and bastion fortresses. Sketchbooks from artisans of the period (Taccola and Leonardo da Vinci, for example) give a deep insight into the mechanical technology then known and applied.

Renaissance science spawned the Scientific Revolution; science and technology began a cycle of mutual advancement.

Renaissance technology

Some important Renaissance technologies, including both innovations and improvements on existing techniques:
*mining and metallurgy
* blast furnace enabled iron to be produced in significant quantities
*finery forge enabled pig iron (from the blast furnace) into bar iron (wrought iron)
*slitting mill mechanized the production of iron rods for nailmaking
*smeltmill increased the output of lead over previous methods ( bole hill)

Late 14th century

Some of the technologies were the arquebus and the musket.

15th century

The technologies that developed in Europe during the second half of the 15th century were commonly associated by authorities of the time with a key theme in Renaissance thought: the rivalry of the Moderns and the Ancients. Three inventions in particular — the printing press, firearms, and the nautical compass — were indeed seen as evidence that the Moderns could not only compete with the Ancients, but had surpassed them, for these three inventions allowed modern people to communicate, exercise power, and finally travel at distances unimaginable in earlier times.

Crank and connecting rod

The crank and connecting rod mechanism which converts circular into reciprocal motion is of utmost importance for the mechanization of work processes; it is first attested for Roman water-powered sawmills. During the Renaissance, its use is greatly diversified and mechanically refined; now connecting-rods are also applied to double compound cranks, while the flywheel is employed to get these cranks over the 'dead-spot'. Early evidence of such machines appears, among other things, in the works of the 15th-century engineers Anonymous of the Hussite Wars and Taccola. From then on, cranks and connecting rods become an integral part of machine design and are applied in ever more elaborate ways: Agostino Ramelli's ''The Diverse and Artifactitious Machines'' of 1588 depicts eighteen different applications, a number which rises in the 17th-century ''Theatrum Machinarum Novum'' by Georg Andreas Böckler to forty-five.

Printing press

The introduction of the mechanical movable type printing press by the German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg (1398–1468) is widely regarded as the single most important event of the second millennium, and is one of the defining moments of the Renaissance. The Printing Revolution which it sparks throughout Europe works as a modern "agent of change" in the transformation of medieval society.

The mechanical device consists of a screw press modified for printing purposes which can produce 3,600 pages per workday, allowing the mass production of printed books on a proto-industrial scale. By the start of the 16th century, printing presses are operating in over 200 cities in a dozen European countries, producing more than twenty million volumes.Febvre, Lucien; Martin, Henri-Jean (1976): "The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450–1800", London: New Left Books, quoted in: Anderson, Benedict: "Comunidades Imaginadas. Reflexiones sobre el origen y la difusión del nacionalismo", Fondo de cultura económica, Mexico 1993, , pp. 58f By 1600, their output had risen tenfold to an estimated 150 to 200 million copies, while Gutenberg book printing spread from Europe further afield.

The relatively free flow of information transcends borders and induced a sharp rise in Renaissance literacy, learning and education; the circulation of (revolutionary) ideas among the rising middle classes, but also the peasants, threatens the traditional power monopoly of the ruling nobility and is a key factor in the rapid spread of the Protestant Reformation. The dawn of the Gutenberg Galaxy, the era of mass communication, is instrumental in fostering the gradual democratization of knowledge which sees for the first time modern media phenomena such as the press or bestsellers emerging. The prized incunables, which are testimony to the aesthetic taste and high proficient competence of Renaissance book printers, are one lasting legacy of the 15th century.

Parachute

The earliest known parachute design appears in an anonymous manuscript from 1470s Renaissance Italy; it depicts a free-hanging man clutching a crossbar frame attached to a conical canopy. As a safety measure, four straps run from the ends of the rods to a waist belt. Around 1485, a more advanced parachute was sketched by the polymath Leonardo da Vinci in his ''Codex Atlanticus'' (fol. 381v), which he scales in a more favorable proportion to the weight of the jumper. Leonardo's canopy was held open by a square wooden frame, altering the shape of the parachute from conical to pyramidal. The Venetian inventor Fausto Veranzio

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