Фаусто Веранцио: Далматин ғалымы мен парашюттің жасалу тарихы

Venetian polymath and bishop

Fausto was born in Sebenico (Šibenik), Venetian Dalmatia into the Croatian family of count Michele/Mihovil Vrančić (Veranzio) and Katarina Berislavić. His father was a Latin poet, while his uncle was Antun Vrančić, archbishop of Esztergom (1504–1573), a diplomat and a civil servant, who was in touch with Erasmus (1465–1536), Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560), and Nikola IV Zrinski (1508–1566), who took care of Fausto's education and later travelled with him during some of Antun's travels through Hungary and in the Republic of Venice. Faust had a brother Kazimir (1557 1637). Veranzio left for Hungary. In 1598, he got the title of bishop of Csanád (Episcŏpus Csanadiensis) in partibus (even though he never set foot in Csanád). In 1609, back in Venice, he joined the brotherhood of Paul of Tarsus (barnabites) and committed himself to the study of science. Veranzio died in 1617 in Venice and was buried in Dalmatia, near his family's countryhouse on the island of Prvić.

One of the illustrations in Machinae Novae is a sketch of a parachute dubbed Homo Volans ("The Flying Man"). Having examined Leonardo da Vinci's rough sketches of a parachute, Veranzio designed one of his own. Paolo Guidotti had already attempted to carry out the idea, ending by falling on a house roof and breaking his thigh bone (about 1590); but while Francis Godwin was writing his flying romance The Man in the Moone, Fausto Veranzio is widely believed to have performed an actual parachute jumping experiment and, therefore, to be the first man to build and test a parachute. According to legend, Veranzio, in 1617, at over sixty five years of age, implemented his parachute design and tested it by jumping from St Mark's Campanile in Venice. This event was documented some 30 years later in the book Mathematical Magick or, the Wonders that may be Performed by Mechanical Geometry (London, 1648), written by John Wilkins, the secretary of the Royal Society in London. But in his book, where Wilkins wrote about flying and the possibility of human flight, methods of slowing down people's fall through the air were not his concern. His treatise does not even mention Veranzio by name, nor does it document any jump by parachute or any event at all in 1617. Devices to register the time using water, fire, or other methods were envisioned and materialized. His own sun clock was effective in reading the time, date, and month, but functioned only in the middle of the day. The construction method of building metal bridges and the mechanics of the forces in the area of statics were also part of his research. He drew proposals which predated the actual construction of modern suspension bridges and cable stayed bridges by over two centuries. The last area was described when further developed in a separate book by mathematician Simon de Bruges (Simon Stevin) in 1586. Veranzio also designed the concept to modern tied arch bridges, through arch bridges, truss bridges and aerial lifts.

Veranzio was the author of a five language dictionary, Dictionarium quinque nobilissimarum Europæ linguarum, Latinæ, Italicæ, Germanicæ, Dalmatiæ, & Vngaricæ, published in Venice in 1595, with 5,000 entries for each language: Latin, Italian, German, the Dalmatian vernacular (in particular, the chakavian dialect of Croatian) and Hungarian. These he called the "five noblest European languages" ("quinque nobilissimarum Europæ linguarum"). The Dictionarium is a very early and significant example of both Croatian and Hungarian lexicography, and contains, in addition to the parallel list of vocabulary, other documentation of these two languages. In particular, Veranzio listed in the Dictionarium 304 Hungarian words that he deemed to be borrowed from Croatian. Also, at the end of the book, Veranzio included Croatian language versions of the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the Ave Maria and the Apostles' Creed. In an extension of the dictionary called Vocabula dalmatica quae Ungri sibi usurparunt, there is a list of Proto Croatian words that entered the Hungarian language. The book greatly influenced the formation of both the Croatian and Hungarian orthography; the Hungarian language accepted his suggestions, for example, the usage of ly, ny, sz, and cz. It was also the first dictionary of the Hungarian language, printed four times, in Venice, Prague (1606), Pozsony (1834), and in Zagreb (1971). The work was an important source of inspiration for other European dictionaries such as a Hungarian and Italian dictionary written by Bernardino Baldi, a German Thesaurus polyglottus by humanist and lexicographer Hieronymus Megiser, and multilingual Dictionarium septem diversarum linguarum by Peterus Lodereckerus of Prague in 1605. The 17th century Brooklyn Tidal Mill in Long Island (NY), one of the most popular and few still standing mills in the New York City area, was built after the plan of Fausto Veranzio. In 1965, "Faust Vrančić" Astronomy Society was founded in Šibenik. In 1969, the medallion with his figure, work by Kosta Angeli Radovani, was embedded in the rector's chain of the University of Zagreb. In 1992, the Croatian Parliament established the "Faust Vrančić" National Award for Technical Culture which is awarded to individuals, associations and other legal persons for outstanding achievements in technical culture. In 1993, his bust was erected at the Nikola Tesla Technical Museum's Sculpture Garden of the Croatian Geniuses of Science and Technology. In 2012, Faust Vrančić Memorial Centre was opened on the island of Prvić where visitors can learn more about Veranzio's life and see his most famous inventions. Croatian Navy's rescue ship BS 73, as well as many schools and streets in Croatia, were named after him. Cultural event Days of Faust Vrančić is held annually in Šibenik.