De gli automati, ouero Machine se mouenti

What it is

This is the 1589 title page of an Italian translation of Hero of Alexandria's treatise on Automata, titled 'On Automats, or Self-Moving Machines.' It was translated from Greek by Bernardino Baldi and printed in Venice.

Why it matters

Over 1,500 years after Hero wrote his original treatise, Renaissance scholars like Baldi were still translating and studying his mechanical designs. This shows the long afterlife of ancient Greek engineering ideas and how they fed into Europe's growing interest in machines and automata during the Renaissance.

Look closer

• What does the ornate design of this title page suggest about how important this book was considered?
• Why do you think people in 1589 were still interested in machines designed over a thousand years earlier?
• What might have been lost or changed in translating Hero's Greek text into Italian?