A Tusi Couple from Schöner's DE REVOLUTIONIBUS ?

In my searches for Copernican materials I have found two other somewhat similar models of the Tusi couple, both parts of larger sets of Copernican paper devices that are clearly related to each other, but probably not to this example. One of these is in the Crawford collection at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, the other bound into a 1543 De revolutionibus in the University Library in Aberdeen. Despite their present Scottish locations, they originated in Germany, perhaps the vicinity of Bamberg.

Note that the book is bound in suede deerskin, quite untypical for mid-sixteenth-century Germany.

Zinner Ernst , Entstehung und Ausbreitung der Coppernicanischen Lehre (Erlangen, 1943), Appendix D, p. 98: Item 98 = Schweinfurt 7038, “Schöner's Korrekturexemplar”.

The equatoria are correctly though rather confusingly described in C. H. Coote's bibliography of Schöner in Stevens Henry , Johann Schöner … A reproduction of his globe of 1523 long lost (London, 1888). The quite rare Aequatorium astronomicum (Bamberg, 1921) contains large volvelles, the forerunner of Petrus Apianus's Astronomicum Caesareum. I know of only about half-a-dozen copies, none in America. The Equatorii astronomici (Nuremberg, 1522) is the small explanatory booklet with diagrams of volvelles but no actual moving parts. The large work was reissued in Nuremberg in 1534 by means of a paper cancel on the original colophon. Schöner's Opera mathematica (Nuremberg, 1551, 1561) contains the equatorium in a smaller and far less elegant version.

Rheticus G. J. , De libri revolutionem Copernici narratio prima (Gdansk, 1540).

Zinner Ernst , Verzeichnis der astronomischen Handschriften des deutschen Kulturgebietes (Munich, 1925); note also the supplements in Bericht der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft Bamberg , xxxviii (1962), 8–57 and xxxix (1964), 7–34. Had I known earlier of this second supplement, I would have easily found not only Lat. Vin. 5002 but also 5228 and 5503 in Schöner's hand.

I am indebted to Prof. Matthias Schramm of Tübingen, whose generous assistance enabled me to see the Reutlingen Aequatorium astronomicum.

Weil's workbook is now in the collection of Henri Schiller, Paris.

I obtained this information with much appreciated help from Yas Maeyama.

The Vienna material enabled me to identify Schöner's hand in a few marginalia in the unique exemplar of the Martin Waldseemuller 1507 wall map, belonging to the Wolfegg Castle, Württenberg. This atlas volume contains a bookplate identical to the one in Codex Vin 5002. The Waldseemuller work is the first printed map to give the name “America” to South America; see pp. 72–74 in Smith Bingham Margaret , The awakening interest in science during the first century of printing (New York, 1970). It is currently on loan exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.