The world was a bigger place in the 18th century than the view from Paris or London might lead you to believe.
Britkin. (1950)
Britkin, A. S. and S. S. Vidonov. Vydayushchiisya maschinostroitel' XVII veka A. K. Nartov. (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Nauchno-Tekhnicheskoe Izdatel'stvo Maschinostroitel'noi Literatury, 1950.)
Translated in 1964 as A. K. Nartov: An Outstanding Machine Builder of the 18th Century ( see below).
Данилевский [Danilevskii] (1958)
Данилевский В.В. Нартов и "Ясное зрелище машин". (Moscow/Leningrad: Mashgiz. Gosudarstvennoe Nauchno-Tekhnicheskoe Izdatel'stvo Maschinostroitel'noi Literatury, 1958.)
This was translated into English in 1966 as V. V. Danilevskii, Nartov and His Theatrum Machinarum ( see below).
About the Russian title: Online translations of "Ясное зрелище машин" give various more or less cryptic results, including "clear sight of vehicles" and "clear spectacle machinery" (Bing). It was transliterated in the 1966 IPST translation as "Nartov i 'Yasnoe zrelishche mashin'" and this was in turn rendered in that edition as "Nartov and His Theatrum Machinarum."
Availability online: A 26 Megabyte PDF of a scan of this 1958 Soviet publication is available online on a number of Russian websites. I found a copy most easily at a Russian historical re-enactor's website: http://books.reenactor.ru/?bookid=864 The scans of the images in this volume are of medium to low quality; they are not as good as those in the printed version of the IPST translation, but are much better than those in the photocopied reproduction of the IPST translation currently available.
Copyright and why this work isn't here: In Russia (and also, I believe, Ukraine) the copyright on this book would now be 70 years from the date of the death of the last surviving of V. V. Danilevskii (author) or A. S. Britkin (editor) (with a possible exception for Russia, at least, if it had passed into the public domain by the time that copyright was extended from 50 to 70 years in 2004.) I do not know the date of death of either of these authors. However, in the US it has since the 1996 implementation of the Uruguay round of GATT been in copyright for the maximum duration under US copyright law (currently, for a 1958 work, publication date + 95 years, which would be 2053 in this case), whether or not it is in copyright elsewhere. I cannot therefore reprint it here.
Britkin. (1950/1964)
Britkin, A. S. and S. S. Vidonov. Trans. E. Tal and J. Baruch. A. K. Nartov: An Outstanding Machine Builder of the 18th Century (Jerusalem: Israel Program for Scientific Translations, 1964).
This is a translation of Vydayushchiisya maschinostroitel' XVII veka A. K. Nartov (1950; see above).
The image quality of the illustrations in the original printed version of this translation is fair. The image quality in the PDF available from the NTRL/NTIS is poorer, but most of the images are not entirely illegible (some are just solid black, though).
The Smithsonian Institution's Technical Translation ("TT") number for this book is: TT-6411111 (originally written TT-64-11111). Formerly it was available from the US Dept. of Commerce as a printed book. Presently (2015) it is available only digitally from the National Technical Reports Library (NTRL) of the National Technical Information Service (NTIC) of the US Department of Commerce. If you are a US citizen you can download a PDF of it from their website ( ntrl.ntis.gov).
Danilevskii. (1958/1966)
Danilevskii, V. V., ed. A. S. Britkin. Intro. Edwin A. Battison. Nartov and His Theatrum Machinarum (Nartov i "Yasnoe zrelishche mashin"). (Jerusalem: Israel Program for Scientific Translations, 1966).
This is a translation of Данилевский В.В. Нартов и "Ясное зрелище машин" ( see above).
See note below for the history and availability of this translation. The image quality of the illustrations in the printed version is fair; in the photocopied version now available digitally from the NTIS, however, the image quality is very bad.
This Smithsonian Institution's Technical Translation ("TT") number for this book is: TT-6411109 (originally written TT-64-11109). This is available now from the NTRL/NTIS (more on this below).
A note on the availability of the translations:
The Britkin/Danilevskii volumes cited above have an unusual history. Their original Russian language versions were written and published in the Soviet Union in the 1950s. Their status under Soviet and later Russian copyright law (and any consequences on the status of 1960s vintage translations of them) is complex and beyond my understanding (even more so because Danilevskii was a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian S.S.R.)
They were translated in the 1960s by Israel Program for Scientific Translations Ltd. under contract to the Smithsonian Institution and the US National Science Foundation. The IPST was an early Israeli publishing house which has evolved into Keter Publishing House, now a large publisher in Israel.
Originally, if my understanding is correct, they were available from the US Department of Commerce and from the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian Institution Libraries Translation Program ( http://www.sil.si.edu/SILPublications/Translation/histech.html) no longer supplies them, however, and has delegated this responsibility to the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) of the US Department of Commerce.
In this timeframe, it was possible, but difficult, to obtain this work from the NTIS. The Britkin/Danilevskii volumes did not appear in the NTIS online database, even though in theory they should have. Armed with the Smithsonian's "Technical Translation" number, I was able to obtain an NTIS reprint of Danilevskii in 1996 (using postal and fax procedures).
However, the quality of the reprints so available is very poor. They are print-on-demand versions of bi-level photocopies of the originals. In my NTIS edition of Danilevskii, for example, the illustrations are not really legible (and, indeed, many of them bear a sticker "NOT REPRODUCIBLE" which has been stuck, annoyingly, right over the image).
At present (2015) this work is available in electronic format only from the National Technical Reports Library (NTRL) of the National Technical Information Service (NTIC) of the US Department of Commerce. If you are a US citizen you can download a PDF of it from their website ( ntrl.ntis.gov). The image quality is no better.
In summary, if you're really interested in learning how Nartov's machines worked and were built, you need to acquire a 1966-vintage printed copy.
Unfortunately, the copyright status of this book is unclear and therefore I cannot reprint them here. If they were simply straightforward US Department of Commerce publications, then they would be in the public domain in the US and I could reprint them. However, they all bear a copyright statement from the IPST. I must therefore assume that they bear an Israeli copyright and that in the US they will, since the 1996 implementation of the Uruguay round of GATT in US copyright law, be in copyright in the US for the maximum allowable period (currently 95 years from the date of publication). Also, the generic terms of service of the NRTL now forbid redistribution, even though if broadly applied to their holdings these terms violate US law (which places federal government works in the public domain).
Nartov has been in bibliographic limbo for over two centuries; it looks as if he will remain there indefinitely.
Zagorskii. History .... (1960)
Zagorskii, F. N., edited by Edwin A. Battison. An Outline of the History of Metal Cutting Machines to the Middle of the 19th Century . (New Dehli, India: Amerind Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd., 1982.)
This is a translation commissioned by the Smithsonian Institution Libraries and the US National Science Foundation of Zagorskii's 1960 Ocherki po Istorii Metallorezhushchikh Stankov do Serediny XIX Veka. (Moscow and Leningrad: Akademiya Nauk SSSR Publishers, 1960.) Its Smithsonian Technical Translation number is "TT 74-52036". It is no longer offered by the Smithsonian. Formerly (but no longer, I think) it was in principle obtainable as a print-on-demand reprint via the US NTIS in the fashion of the Nartov volumes noted above. Regardless, it is also subject to the same copyright issues (bearing a 1982 copyright by Amerind Publishing Co. in New Dehli).
Update (2015): The National Technical Reports Library (NTRL) of the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) of the US Dept. of Commerce presently indicates that this Report, now numbered PB86153996, is not digitized and must be purchased through the NTIS Web Store.
This is of course more than just a history of Nartov or 18th century Russian engine turning; its scope is precisely what its title indicates. It is unfortunate that this book is so little known, as is it a remarkable history which does not suffer from the anglocentrism of most Western machine tool histories.
For the history of engine turning, it is notable both for its review of Nartov's work and its coverage of lesser-known 18th century work such as that of La Condamine. It also contains the first three chapters of Nartov's unpublished Theatrum Machinarum.
Finally, it is interesting from the meta-historical point of view to compare it to the Stalinist-era work of someone such as Britkin. It is much more modern in its critical framework.
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