Inventions of the Renaissance

German inventor Johannes Gutenberg has devised one of the most revolutionary inventions to ever spread across Europe, the Gutenberg printing press! Invented around 1440, this printing press forever changed the spread of learning and information in Europe. It enabled people to mass produce printed books in a way that they had not been able to before. To create his invention, Gutenberg made movable metal type of each letter in the alphabet that could be arranged and rearranged to make different pages of text. By printing these pages on paper or vellum, Gutenberg produced the first mass printed book in Europe, the Gutenberg Bible. Around 1455, Gutenberg printed 180 copies of the Gutenberg Bible. While this may seem like a small number, this was a huge feat as historians believe that at the time of his invention there were only about 30,000 books in all of Europe. Word of Gutenberg’s invention spread far and wide, and the printing press is known for spreading education, literacy, and information during the Renaissance and beyond.

Looking for a more precise way to keep track of the time than a sundial? You’re in luck! The mechanical clock will revolutionize the way you keep track of your daily duties. While people around the world have been using some version of a mechanical clock for centuries, this particular invention was first recorded in 1283 in England and includes a special piece of machinery called an escapement. The escapement makes the clock highly accurate and is responsible for creating that familiar ticking sound. No one is quite sure who invented this mechanical clock. What we do know is that it revolutionized time keeping all over Europe. It led to the adoption of a more uniform way to tell time in which the day is split into two 12 hour periods that begin at midnight. That’s not all—in 1656, Dutch inventor Christiaan Huygens invented the pendulum clock using concepts discovered by Galileo Galilei. This new clock allowed Renaissance scientists and astronomers to measure time even more precisely and was the world’s foremost timekeeper until the development of the electric clock in the twentieth century.

Tired of not knowing what time it is when you’re out and about in town? Well, a brand new invention has solved this problem for you! Peter Henlein, a locksmith and clockmaker from Nuremberg, Germany created one of the world's first wearable timepieces, also known as a watch, around 1500. Inspired by Henlein’s creation, watchmakers began to make decorative watches, often called Nuremberg eggs for their round or oval shape, that people either carried by hand or wore around their necks. They were quite fashionable and were helping people all around Europe mark each hour of the day. While these early watches are known for their beautiful designs, they are, unfortunately, also known for their lack of precision. One bump and your portable timepiece may tell you it's time for lunch when it’s really time for tea! But don’t worry, a clockmaker in Prague, Jacob Zech, designed a watch piece called a fusee in 1525. The fusee device dramatically improved upon Henlein’s original design by making watches more accurate than ever before.

Introducing a brand new invention that will change warfare forever! This new invention, called the musket, evolved in Spain sometime around the 16th century. Historians don’t know who invented this weapon, but we do know that it was not the first of its kind. Rather, it is a new and improved version of the harquebus, the first European gun that was fired from the shoulder. Like many good inventions, the musket owes its success to another innovation, the arrival of gunpowder in Europe during the 13th century. While gunpowder was likely created by the Chinese around the year 850, historians believe that it did not make its first appearance in European warfare until 1346 during the Battle of Crecy. Muskets rely on gunpowder to fire and early muskets were so large that they required two people to handle them. The introduction of gunpowder and muskets during the European Renaissance has changed the history of modern warfare all over the world.

After much experimentation by several scientists around Europe, the Italian inventor Santorio Santorio has invented the world’s first clinical thermometer! This revolutionary invention is just one step towards an even more accurate way to measure the temperature of the human body, the outdoors, and even boiling water! However, Santorio was not the first to start developing this device. Years earlier, Galileo Galilei created a glass tube that he placed in water. This invention, called a thermoscope, was able to indicate large relative temperature changes. Unfortunately, it was not very practical as there was no way to measure the exact temperature and record the data. Using the concepts developed by Galilei, Santorio is credited as the first person to add a scale to the thermoscope, transforming it into a thermometer around 1612. Santorio’s original Renaissance thermometer lacked precision. Despite this, it paved the way for future inventors, like Gabriel Farenheit and Anders Celcuis, to refine this method of telling and recording the temperature!

Studying the stars and the smallest parts of the natural world just got a lot easier thanks to the invention of glass lenses! These special lenses were invented in the Netherlands between 1590 and 1608. They are used in the telescope and the microscope. Both of these devices use lenses (concave or convex) that magnify things in order to make them easier to perceive with the human eye. Hans Lippershey, a Dutch eyeglass maker, was the first person to patent the telescope in 1608, while Hans Janssen and his son are usually credited as the inventors of the microscope in the late 1500s. Historians think that it is likely that all three of these men helped to develop both the microscope and the telescope. Interestingly, scientist and inventor Galileo Galilei refined the designs of both instruments around 1609 and was the first person to use a telescope to view space. He used the new invention to view the moon, the rings around Saturn, and the Milky Way, all while contemplating the Copernican model of the solar system where the sun is at the center.

German scientist Hennig Brand has made a shocking discovery that will ‘light up people’s lives’ for centuries to come! In 1669, while experimenting for a way to create gold, Brand accidentally isolated the element phosphorus from urine. This element is highly flammable and was unknown to scientists and alchemists prior to this Renaissance discovery! Word of this element spread throughout Europe, and Anglo-Irish chemist Sir Robert Boyle refined Brand’s method for isolating phosphorus. In 1680, Boyle created an invention called the match. He coated a piece of paper with phosphorus and then coated a small splinter of wood in sulfur. By drawing the splinter of wood across the paper, the match allows its user to create a flame. As phosphorus was difficult to obtain at the time of Boyle’s invention, the match was considered quite a curiosity and would not be commonly used for over 100 more years

Thanks to a technology that is brand new to Europe, boat captains all over the continent have a more effective way to steer their ships! People have been using oars, sometimes called side rudders, to steer their ships for centuries. This invention, however, the stern-mounted rudder, makes it easier and safer to steer large ships. Historians aren’t sure how the first stern-mounted rudder arrived in Europe. What we do know is that this invention first appeared in church carvings around the year 1180. While the rudder was still new to Europeans during the early Renaissance, some historians believe that people in China were using a similar technology as early as 1 AD, a thousand years before rudders arrived in the West! It is possible that the stern-mounted rudder in Europe was developed independently of the Chinese technology, but historians think it is more likely that this rudder was introduced to the continent through the trade that occurred between Europe and Asia during this time.

INVENTIONSOF THE RENAISSANCE

INVENTIONS
OF THE
RENAISSANCE