De Re Metallica, Translated from the First Latin Edition of 1556

A. B. Stanford University, Member American Institute of Mining Engineers, Mining and Metallurgical Society of America, Société des Ingéniéurs Civils de France, American Institute of Civil Engineers, Fellow Royal Geographical Society, etc., etc. AND LOU HENRY HOOVER A. B. Stanford University, Member American Association for the Advancement of Science, The National Geographical Society, Royal Scottish Geographical Society, etc., etc. 1950 Dover Publications, Inc. NEW YORK TO JOHN CASPAR BRANNER Ph.D., The inspiration of whose teaching is no less great than his contribution to science. This New 1950 Edition of DE RE METALLICA is a complete and unchanged reprint of the translation published by The Mining Magazine, London, in 1912. It has been made available through the kind permission of Honorable Herbert C. Hoover and Mr. Edgar Rickard, Author and Publisher, respectively, of the original volume. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TRANSLATORS' PREFACE. here are three objectives in translation of works of this character: to give a faithful, literal translation of the author's statements; to give these in a manner which will interest the reader; and to preserve, so far as is possible, the style of the original text. The task has been doubly difficult in this work because, in using Latin, the author availed himself of a medium which had ceased to expand a thousand years before his subject had in many particulars come into being; in consequence he was in difficulties with a large number of ideas for which there were no corresponding words in the vocabulary at his command, and instead of adopting into the text his native German terms, he coined several hundred Latin expressions to answer his needs. It is upon this rock that most former attempts at translation have been wrecked. Except for a very small number, we believe we have been able to discover the intended meaning of such expressions from a study of the context, assisted by a very incomplete glossary prepared by the author himself, and by an exhaustive investigation into the literature of these subjects during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. That discovery in this particular has been only gradual and obtained after much labour, may be indicated by the fact that the entire text has been re-typewritten three times since the original, and some parts more often; and further, that the printer's proof has been thrice revised. We have found some English equivalent, more or less satisfactory, for