#34 Brunelleschi & The Dome V

* BTW – in 1421, Bruno was awarded the world’s first ever patent for invention. * The patent describes Bruno as “a man of the most perspicacious intellect, industry and invention,” * And this document granted him a patent of monopoly for “some machine or kind of ship, by means of which he thinks he can easily, at any time, bring in any merchandise and load on the river Arno and on any other river or water, for less money than usual.” * This ship was called  Il Badalone, “the Monster.” * According to the terms of the patent, any boat copying its design, and thereby violating Filippo’s monopoly, would be condemned to flames. * The design of the boat is a bit of a mystery. * Might have had paddles like a paddle steamer. * Di Prato again said it was doomed to fail. * He wrote a poem where He called Bruno a “pit of ignorance” and a “miserable beast and imbecile,” and promised to commit suicide should Filippo’s plan succeed. * Lucky for him – he didn’t have to kill himself. * Bruno promised the Opera his boat would be able to ship all of the marble they needed from Carrara cheaper and faster. * Unfortunately on its maiden voyage, something went wrong – we don’t know what. * But the marble never arrived. * And the Opera forced him to replace it with his own money. * BTW in 1423, two years after Filippo finished building his hoist, a Sicilian adventurer named Giovanni Aurispa returned from Constantinople with a hoard of 238 manuscripts written in Greek, a language that scholars in Italy had learned only in the previous few decades. * Among these treasures were six lost plays by Aeschylus and seven by Sophocles, as well as works by Plutarch, Lucian, Strabo, and Demosthenes. * But there was also a complete copy of the works of the geometer Proclus of Alexandria and, even more important for engineers, a treatise on ancient lifting devices, the Mathematical Collection of Pappus of Alexandria. * This latter work, from the fourth century A.D., describes the windlass, the compound pulley, the worm and wheel, the screw and the gear train—all essential features of hoists and cranes. * In the decades that followed, so many manuscripts on Greek mathematics and engineering emerged that it is possible to speak of a “renaissance of mathematics” in fifteenth-century Italy. * But even if Bruno had got his hands on these manuscripts in time to help with the dome, he wouldn’t have been able to read them, as he couldn’t read Latin or Greek. * Manetti also suggests another inspiration for the ox-hoist. * He claims that Bruno, while still a young goldsmith, built a number of mechanical clocks equipped with “various and diverse generations of springs.” * Which, if true, is amazing, because spring-loaded clocks weren’t used for another hundred years when metallurgical techniques were refined enough that it became possible to manufacture resilient wire. * There’s no other evidence for this, except a drawing made decades later. * He also invented GASLIGHTING. * Tell the Fat Carpenter story. * With the Dome finished, the city proved itself as good – or greater – than Ancient Rome in architecture. * A new sense of self-esteem. * But then came the lantern, the bit up the very top. * Bruno must have thought that after all this time, he’d proven himself and they’d just let him design the fucking lantern. * But no.