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215: 269 2001Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part C: Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science

M Ceccarelli and M CigolaTrends in the drawing of mechanisms since the early Middle Ages

  

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by Michela Cigola on October 12, 2012pic.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Trends in the drawing of mechanisms since the earlyMiddle Ages

M Ceccarelli* and M Cigola

Dipartimento di Meccanica, Strutture, Ambiente e Territorio, UniversitaÁ di Cassino, Italy

Abstract: Drawing of mechanisms is a fundamental tool for mechanical design and representation.

In this paper a historical study on the evolution of representation of mechanisms has been carried out

in order to establish the historic background and identify the progress over time. Investigating several

authors has identi® ed basic changes in the evolution of mechanism drawing, and a few examples are

reported in this paper to stress the main concepts. The drawing of mechanisms has evolved from anintentionally incomplete representation to a naturalistic and pictorial view, then from concise sketches

and kinematic diagrams to modern abstract graphic pictures. The development of mechanism

drawing has been strongly linked with and aVected by the evolution of knowledge in mechanical

sciences and particularly mechanism design.

Keywords: history of mechanical engineering, history of drawing, theory of mechanisms, kinematics,

drawing of mechanisms

1 INTRODUCTION

The development of mechanical science has been based

on the evolution of the technical means, which have

been used both for enhancing knowledge and for-

mulating better procedures and criteria for design

activity. One of the fundamental means is the drawingtechnique. In fact, since the beginning of a technical

culture, great attention has been paid to the drawing of

the mechanical characteristics of machines and

mechanisms by inventors, constructors, designers,scholars and academicians. This is because most con-

cepts and design calculations have been and can be

developed and formulated on the basis of the drawings

of machines and mechanisms. Indeed, over time, dif-

ferent levels of modelling and several kinds of sketchhave been developed for mechanism design or to

enhance the knowledge on the properties of rigid-body

motion. Moreover, the development of drawing as an

expressive language has required a standardization and

universal acceptance of the formalisms and representa-

tions.

In this paper a historical overview of the evolution oftechnical representations of mechanisms is presented by

using some representative drawings in order to point out

the basic developments in the drawing of mechanisms

through the study of a few signi® cant authors. Pre-

liminary studies have been useful in focusing interest on

this obscure activity of designers, and ® rst observations

have been reported in a previous paper [1]y . The novelcontribution of this paper is an attempt to explain the

evolution of mechanism drawing from an intentionally

incomplete representation to a naturalistic and pictorial

view, then from concise sketches and kinematic dia-

grams to modern abstract graphic pictures. The pecu-liarity is that the drawing of mechanisms evolved very

slowly, with a combination and mixture of diVerent

approaches. Moreover, over time, some authors used

old representations or innovative schemes much before

they were actually used.Indeed, the speci® c literature on mechanical design

and the theory of mechanisms has grown considerably

in the last two centuries, so that in this paper the

references and the authors have been limited to only a

few examples. However, the reported examples can be

thought of as illustrative and signi® cant for the state ofthe art on the topic of this paper. In fact, this report has

been developed in order to give a historical insight into

the evolution of the obscure activity of mechanism

drawing, which is nevertheless fundamental for

mechanical design. Another goal of this paper is to sti-

The MS was received on 22 October 1999 and was accepted after revisionfor publication on 10 May 2000.* Corresponding author: Dipartimento di Meccanica, Strutture,Ambiente e Territorio, UniversitaÁ di Cassino, Via Di Biasio 43, 03043Cassino (Fr), Italy.

yA preliminary Italian version has been published as M. Ceccarelli andM. Cigola, Evoluzione della rappresentazione gra® ca nel progetto deimeccanismi, Il Disegno di Progetto: dalle Origini al XVIII Secolo (Ed.M. Docci), 1997, pp. 427± 433 (Gangemi, Rome).

269

C14799 ß IMechE 2001 Proc Instn Mech Engrs Vol 215 Part C by Michela Cigola on October 12, 2012pic.sagepub.comDownloaded from

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The following libraries are gratefully acknowledged fortheir help in ® nding the original texts: the `Biblioteca

Apostolica Vaticana’ at the Vatican, the University

Library in Pisa (Dr A. Finzi), the University Library in

Padova (Dr A. Antonioni), the University Library

in Turin (Mr T. Basaglia), the University Library inBologna (Dr T. Lucchini), the University Library `Boaga’

at the La Sapienza University of Rome (Dr A. Colarossi),

the Library of the Department of Mechanics and Aero-

nautics at the La Sapienza University of Rome (Mrs F.

Trollini), the Library of the `Castelnuovo’ School ofMathematics at the La Sapienza University of Rome

and the Library at the Abbey of Montecassino (Dom

Gregorio De Francesco).

Prof. Bernard Roth of Stanford University, Cali-

fornia and Prof. Justo Nieto of the Technical Uni-

versity of Valencia, Spain, are gratefully acknowledgedfor permission to use their personal libraries. Together

with Prof. Teun Koetsier of Vrije University of

Amsterdam, The Netherlands, they are gratefully

acknowledged for their helpful comments during the

writing of this paper.

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288 M CECCARELLI AND M CIGOLA

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TRENDS IN THE DRAWING OF MECHANISMS SINCE THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES 289

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