Livro - Biringuccio - 09-1002-0

xxvi
PIROTECHNIA
Acknowledgments
THE translators wish to record their appreciation of the help given by many
individuals with whom they have discussed various details of the work.
They are particularly indebted to Mrs. Anne Noble McKeachie, who initiated
their collaboration; to Miss Cora Adamson, who spent many hours
in making an accurate copy of a much-mutilated &st draft of the translation;
and to the Yale University Library which gave access to its excellent
collection of books on all aspects of the history of the sciences. The reader
will share with the translators their obvious indebtedness to Mr. Carl P.
Rollins, Mr. James W. Boyden, and the staff of the Printing-Office of the
Yale University Press.
The publication of this translation by the American Institute of Mrrung
and Metdurgid Engineers has been made possible by a grant &om the Seeley
W. Mudd Memorial Fund, administered by a committee composed of
Harvey S. Mudd, H. DeWitt Smith, and George Otis Smith. The translators
are gratified that their work has been judged to fall within the scope
of this Fund, which was established for the advancement of the sciences
of mining and metallurgy by the encouragement of research and the dissemination
of knowledge, and especially for the fktherance of such activities
as might benefit the younger members of the profession. While Biringuccio's
book would scarcely serve as a dependable text for the young
mining student or metallurgist, it can give him a sense of his membership
in a long-standing and honorable profession and enable him better to see his
own work in true perspective.
It is hoped that this English edition of a sixteenth-century Italian work will
be read by the practicing metallurgist as well as by those who have already
found pleasure in exploring the past of their profession. A man always feels
more at home in a foreign country with men of his own craft than in his
birthplace with those of different interests: As in space, so in time, and the
modem metallurgist who may be unmoved by the literary and artistic
Renaissance will quickly appreciate the spirit of that exciting period as he
taks shop with Biringuccio on a visit to mine, smelter, forge, and foundry;
as he sees in different forms the very furnaces and machines whose operation
and response he knows so well; and as he discusses with this engineer of four
centuries ago such topics as the best kinds of fuel or refractory for a given
operation, and the importance of adequate supplies of power and material.