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LeTigron t1_j5mcdaj wrote

That's not true, unfortunately.

This practice existed way before and is called a "theatre of machines" : a book in which you expose your inventions and capabilities, as currently we do with "portfolio".

Konrad Kaiser Kyeser and Hans Tallhoffer are two persons reknown for theirs and they predate Da Vinci by more than a century.

Edit : mistake on Kyeser's name.

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Pfeffer_Prinz OP t1_j5md60y wrote

oh interesting, I was just going off the article & wikipedia...

Do you have any sources? I googled "machine theatre" (and added "Konrad Kaiser" then "Hans Tallhoffer") but couldn't find any descriptions

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LeTigron t1_j5meg3k wrote

Sorry, I wrote "Kaiser" by mistake, it's Konrad Kyeser.

Hans Tallhoffer is most reknown for being a fencing master, so I advise you to add "inventions" in your google search to see his book.

Use quotation marks around the terms, like this : "theatre of machine", so that google looks for exactly this expression, or else you wilm have results like "new machines in theatres around the globe are bla bla bla" that we don't care about.

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Pfeffer_Prinz OP t1_j5mgpqw wrote

hmmm... the Tallhoffer search had 0 results:

> Your search - "theatre of machine" hans tallhoffer - did not match any documents.

for Kyeser I found Bellifortis, which wikipedia describes as "the first fully illustrated manual of military technology" ... Is that what you meant? it's cool, but it doesn't mention anything about applying for jobs...

Are there any links you can share for what you mean?

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LeTigron t1_j5mhlds wrote

Bellifortis is indeed the theatre of machines of Kyeser. If you didn't find anything on Talhoffer - and I made another mistake, there's only on L - , which seems weird, you can try a video on youtube explaining everything called something like "Talhoffer's weird inventions".

I don't have any ressource at hand in English, unfortunately, but the term isn't that rare, you will find easily.

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Pfeffer_Prinz OP t1_j5mmjjw wrote

are you just talking about military manuals... or about job applications specifically?

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LeTigron t1_j5mn74v wrote

Both. The theatres of machines were resumes.

You publish the book with pictures and small descriptions of what you devised and let it spread around. You take care to not say everything so that, if someone wants something from the book, they can't do it by themselves and have to call you, because you're the only one who know what the drawings in the book miss.

And there, you have a job. That was the normal way for engineers to get jobs during late Middle-Ages, many did so.

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Pfeffer_Prinz OP t1_j5mqrwl wrote

interesting... I guess that's more of "advertising" than an application... like having a website of your work, so people could check it out and then reach out if they need your work.

It makes sense to me that Leonardo's letter would be considered unique from that, since his document was specifically written for someone who was trying to fill a specific position. That's what we still do today with résumés.

of course we also do websites, but that's a separate thing

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LeTigron t1_j5mrca5 wrote

Indeed, in such case I have no previous occurrence in mind.

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