Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.16853

    The sembrador

    Date
    3 March 1670
    Creator
    Unknown, Artist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p1
    Material
    Technique
    Dimensions
    height (plate): 118mm
    width (plate): 170mm
    Subject
    Content object
    Description
    An etching of a 'sembrador' accompanying John Evelyn's letter to William Brouncker dated 23 February 1670, which was read to the Royal Society on 3 March 1670. Evelyn wrote that he had come across a Spanish tract about this new sowing plough two years earlier, though it had been introduced into Spain from Germany. This print presumably came from that tract. At the bottom, ink annotations indicate the scale in inches. Its internal structure was illustrated on the next sheet. Evelyn asked the Spanish ambassador to send an actual example; it was broken in transit, but was given to the Repository. Evelyn's description was printed in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol. 5, no. 60.
    Object history
    3 March 1670, ‘Mr. Evelyn having moved in his letter, that the description of the Spanish engine might be printed in the Philosophical Transactions, it was ordered, that Mr. Hooke should be desired to consider this Spanish engine and put it into order, and likewise make a scheme and description of the English, to be published together’ (Birch 2:425).

    Tab. 1 from John Evelyn, 'The Spanish Sembrador', Phil. Trans., vol. 5, no. 60 (June 1670), pp. 1055-65.

    The 'Sembradore' is listed in the catalogue of the Royal Society's Repository, Nehemiah Grew, Musæum Regalis Societatis (London: W. Rawlins, 1681), p. 371.
    Related fellows
    John Evelyn (1620 - 1706, British) , Diarist
    William Brouncker, 2nd Viscount Brouncker of Lyons (1620 - 1684, British) , Mathematician
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > Spain
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > Germany
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