Medieval Lives 8: Giovanni Fontana

Human Circus: Journeys in the Medieval World

Giovanni Fontana was a 15th-century Italian engineer and inventor. His designs included everything from systems for retrieving sunken ships and automating the defence of fortifications to measuring time and producing music. He created locks, clocks, and magic lanterns.

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Sources:

• Fontana, Giovanni. Bellicorum instrumentorum liber cum figuris... Digitized at https://codicon.digitale-sammlungen.de/inventiconCod.icon.%20242.html
• Gilbert, Bennett. “The Dreams of an Inventor in 1420,” Public Domain Review. 2018. https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-dreams-of-an-inventor-in-1420/
• Grafton, Anthony. “The Devil as Automaton: Giovanni Fontana and the Meanings of a Fifteenth-Century Machine,” in Genesis Redux: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Artificial Life, edited by Jessica Riskin. University of Chicago Press, 2007.
• Grafton, Anthony. Magic and Technology in Early Modern Europe. Smithsonian Institution Libraries, 2005.
• Grafton, Anthony. Magus: The Art of Magic from Faustus to Agrippa. Harvard University Press, 2023.
• Rossi, Cesare and Russo, Flavio. Ancient Engineers' Inventions: Precursors of the Present. Springer, 2016.
• Sparavigna, A.C. “Giovanni de la Fontana, Engineer and Magician.” Cornell University Library, 2013.

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