Novo Teatro: Vittorio Zonca, 1656

Books featuring theaters of machines were popular among literate Europeans in the 1600s. Author Vittorio Zonca believed in perpetual motion, so this volume included a design for a perpetual-motion water mill. Water rises from a reservoir, apparently on the principle of a siphon or massive capillary tube. The water then drives the mill before returning to the reservoir, where the cycle repeats itself endlessly.