An Introduction to the History of Structural Mechanics: Part II: Vaulted Structures and Elastic Systems

Edoardo Benvenuto

ISBN 10: 0387971874 / ISBN 13: 9780387971872

Published by Springer, 1990

About this Item

Some wear to edges of covers, including a small bump in lower right-hand front corner. Scuffing to cover and sunning to spine. Internally clean and bright.

Seller Inventory # mon0000133972

Bibliographic Details

• Title: An Introduction to the History of Structural Mechanics: Part II: Vaulted Structures and Elastic Systems
• Publisher: Springer
• Publication Date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0387971874
• ISBN 13: 9780387971872
• Binding: hardcover
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

This book is one of the finest I have ever read. To write a foreword for· it is an honor, difficult to accept. Everyone knows that architects and master masons, long before there were mathematical theories, erected structures of astonishing originality, strength, and beauty. Many of these still stand. Were it not for our now acid atmosphere, we could expect them to stand for centuries more. We admire early architects' visible success in the distribution and balance of thrusts, and we presume that master masons had rules, perhaps held secret, that enabled them to turn architects' bold designs into reality. Everyone knows that rational theories of strength and elasticity, created centuries later, were influenced by the wondrous buildings that men of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries saw daily. Theorists know that when, at last, theories began to appear, architects distrusted them, partly because they often disregarded details of importance in actual construction, partly because nobody but a mathematician could understand the aim and func­ tion of a mathematical theory designed to represent an aspect of nature. This book is the first to show how statics, strength of materials, and elasticity grew alongside existing architecture with its millenial traditions, its host of successes, its ever-renewing styles, and its numerous problems of maintenance and repair. In connection with studies toward repair of the dome of St. Peter's by Poleni in 1743, on p.