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The geotechnical setting of the forts of the Saxon Shore in SE England: A record lasting nearly 2 millennia
Published in Renato Lancellotta, Carlo Viggiani, Alessandro Flora, Filomena de Silva, Lucia Mele, Geotechnical Engineering for the Preservation of Monuments and Historic Sites III, 2022
Edward N. Bromhead, Maia-Laura Ibsen
All walled enclosures have the purpose of keeping what is inside safe from what is outside, or vice versa. In the former case the enclosures are defensive fortifications, and in the latter, prisons. The projecting bastions favour the fortification idea, because bastions and towers are force-multiplying structures, and show that the fortification is intended to resist siege from a large force and not a simple raiding party, as without that, a simple wall is adequate protection for the occupants, giving enough time for them to be mustered into defensive formations.
Teaching Engineers in the Seventeenth Century: European Influences in Portugal
Published in Engineering Studies, 2018
Antónia Fialho Conde, M. Rosa Massa-Esteve
In this article, we first focus our attention on Serrão Pimentel’s biography. This is followed by a proposal for the analysis of his book, for which priority is given to the structure of the work. We emphasize Serrão Pimentel’s authorial choices in the different chapters of the book, in order to demonstrate his mastery in various matters. In this analysis, two central aspects are then considered. First, we contextualize his proposal for innovation in bastion fortification, which he deals with in his book in order to provide ‘exercise in practice’ for the formation of military engineers. Their training was based on this discourse by Serrão Pimentel in accordance with his own model rather than by any foreign method or discourse. Second, we demonstrate Serrão Pimentel’s extensive knowledge of mathematics, which enabled him to teach practical geometry, decimal calculation in accordance with Simon Stevin’s work and Euclid’s Elements from the Euclidian work by the Jesuit Christophorus Clavius (1538–1612), teacher at the Collegium Romano. We show how Serrão Pimentel addressed the original training of seventeenth-century engineers, and how he provided practical engineers with some examples of geometrical constructions to deepen their mathematical knowledge in that period.