De la pirotechnia
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De la Pirotechnia is considered to be one of the first printed books on metallurgy to have been published in Europe. It was written in Italian and first published in Venice in 1540. The author was Van
Title page, De la pirotechnia, 1540, Science History Museum
De re metallica
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De re metallica is a book in Latin cataloguing the state of the art of mining, refining, and smelting metals, published a year posthumously in 1556 due to a delay in preparing woodcuts for the text. T
De la pirotechnia
…and Spanish (Bernardo Perez de Vargas) at various times in the 1550s and 1560s, generally without acknowledgement. The second book on metallurgy, De re metallica, was written in Latin by Georgius Agricola, and published in 1556. Mining was typically left to professionals, craftsmen and experts who were not eager…
Title page of 1561 edition
A water-powered mine hoist used for raising ore
Prospecting, a woodcut from the book
Underground chain pump, in a hand-colored woodcut illustration from Book VI of the German edition of 1557