Curiosa: There are old engineers, and bold engineers ...

[nebroadwe]

From the lavishly illustrated German edition of Vegetius's De re militari, as printed by Hans Knappe in 1511, I give you:Renaissance scuba gear.
Some days I just love my job to death.

Many thanks to the Munich Digitisation Centre for having the good taste to get this one online. I hope we'll be doing the same at least for the hand-colored plates in our copy.

Comments

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

fun

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I think I'm going to have to sit down with Vegetius's text at some point to find out how he intends some of the devices pictured to be used. They can look a bit ... dodgy.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

that would be interesting

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Further bulletins as events warrant. I mentioned this over on library_mofo as well, and it seems to be going mildly viral from there. :-)

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

haha