An Introduction to the History of Structural Mechanics

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxi

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2. The Principles of Statics

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. Methodological Preliminaries

      • Edoardo Benvenuto

      Pages 3-42

   3. The Law of the Lever

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      Pages 43-76

   4. The Principle of Virtual Velocities

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      Pages 77-115

   5. The Parallelogram of Forces

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      Pages 116-142

3. De Resistentia Solidorum

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 143-143

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   2. Galileo and His “Problem”

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      Pages 145-197

   3. First Studies on the Causes of Resistance

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      Pages 198-232

   4. The Initial Growth of Galileo’s Problem

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      Pages 233-261

   5. Early Theories of the Strength of Materials

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      Pages 262-293

4. Back Matter

   Pages 294-306

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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.

• Fundament
• History
• mechanics
• solids
• statics
• structural mechanics
• structure

• Facoltà di Architettura di Genova, Università di Genova, Genova, Italy

  Edoardo Benvenuto

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