ABSTRACT
Inventions on Johannes Stradanus's list that certainly originated in the West include oil painting, spectacles, the polishing of armor and the art of engraving on copper. Stradanus worked at the court of Francesco de Medici, who was not only a patron of the arts but an active promoter of science and industry. Though Stradanus's list is long and rather mixed, he missed two important inventions that he had in front of his nose: the paper on which his series was printed and the numerals that listed them. In the venerable civilizations of the East, custom was king and tradition the guiding principle. It is common knowledge that, for the first three of Stradanus's new inventions, the Chinese had priority over the West. The Greco-Roman world was far advanced in the construction of mechanical gears, which were one element in the mechanism of clocks, but they lacked the vital contribution of the escapement that secures even movement.
