"None of our mordern craftsmen [except Alberti] has known how to write these subject..."
Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists (1550)
Devised by Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472), the anemometer was a simple instrument to measure wind speed. It had a rectangular metal plate attached to a horizontal axis with a hinge, so that in the wind the metal plate lifted, giving an indication of relative wind speed that could be measured crudely on a curved scale bar below the plate. In light winds, the plate would move slightly on its hinge; in stronger winds, the plate would lift further. Alberti describes and illustrates this device in his book, The Pleasure of Mathematics (1450).' The well-educated son of a wealthy merchant, Albert! was an accomplished artist, athlete, horserider, musician, mathematician, cryptographer (inventing the cipher disc), classicist, writer, cleric, and architect. He was a true Renaissance polymath, created by the intellectual culture prevailing in the Italian cities at the time.
As an artist and an architect, Alberti was inspired by Filipppo Brunelleschi's use of linear perspective and his great design for the dome of Florence Cathedral, where Alberti was a canon. In turn, Alberti's work, including the anemometer, inspired Leonardo da Vinci, who made drawings of it and saw its value in his designs for flying machines.
Alberti's simple design served its users for more than 200 years, until a British scientist, Robert Hooke (1635-1703), reinvented it in 1664, placing the moving plate beneath the curved scale bar to ensure more accurate measurements. Almost two centuries passed before the four-cup windmill anemometer was invented, in 1846, by the Irish astronomer John Thomas Romney Robinson (1792-1842).
