Invention  

"The work of Alexius Pedemontanus De Secretis is no contemptible source from which materials may be drawn for the technological History of Inventions; and on this account it will perhaps afford pleasure to many if I here give an account of the author, according to such information as I have been able to obtain."--A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins (1797) by Johann Beckmann

"It was an essential feature of the European Renaissance to praise recent discoveries and achievements as a means to assert the independence of modern culture from the institutions and wisdom inherited from Classical (Greek and Roman) authorities. From the first years of the sixteenth century, a key conceit used to this end by the most eminent humanists (François Rabelais, Gerolamo Cardano, Jean Bodin, Tommaso Campanella, Francis Bacon, etc.) was that of the "Three Greatest Inventions of Modern Times" — the printing press, firearms, and the nautical compass — which together allowed the Moderns to communicate, exert power, and travel at distances never imagined by the Ancients. When the quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns later arose in France, this conceit of "Three Greatest Inventions of Modern Times" would almost invariably be adduced as evidence of the Moderns' superiority."--Sholem Stein