[split] Taccola spillover thread

[Koen G]

I disagree. They are failed copies.

This is not a matter of opinion, you confidently stating falsehoods as facts. I just hoped I could get away with a quick explanation, but well, here we go.


As a reminder, the MS that contains book III and IV of De ingeneis is Pal 766. This is an autograph by Taccola, made 1432–1433 and intended as a dedication to the Emperor upon his visit to Siena. It is unclear whether a separate copy was given to the Emperor.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. give a translation for the text with the siphon bridge drawing in Book III, the one we are interested in.

Behold the bridge in back, and near it
the city, as shown on this sheet. The
water, which springs forth next to the
river and its banks, cannot pass across
without a bridge. If the bridge were
constructed flat, it would be carried
away by the impact of water. Therefore
let a bridge be built in the shape of an
arch, so that a flood of water may pass
below it and flow off swiftly. Then let
pipes be installed on the bridge. Let
the intake of the rising pipe be smaller
in length than the discharge pipe. Make
the discharge pipe greater in length by
an extra one-fourth. To learn the way of
lifting water onto the bridge, turn to the
example in the Second Book, of the
Dragon, folio 96 [II 94v]; and it appears
more clearly in the First Book, of the
Lion, fol. 69 , done by the hand of
said Ser Mariano.

Taccola frames this as a new problem, and refers to his previous books (De ingeneis I & II) for other instances where he talked about bridge syphons. He uses drawings of animals in his works as bookmarks; you can see the "Dragon" in book II here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . When we go to the specified folio of the Book of the Dragon, we see this image: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I don't want to go through every Taccola MS to find the source of the drawbridge image, but it is clear that this is again a separate engineering problem. In the text under the drawing, you can see that it says "castellum cum ponte levatorio", "castle with a drawbridge". 

This picture should clarify the relations between all images:

   

Edit: wait, the image you labelled as being from the later model book is actually from the Taccola original, isn't it? So you're saying an image from De Ingeneis II is a failed copy of the image in De Ingeneis III, while we have Taccola in III saying "yo guys I used a similar technique earlier in II, go check it out".