Tito Livio Burattini

Tito Livio Burattini ( born March 8, 1617 in Agordo, Belluno, Italy, † November 17, 1681 in Kraków ) was a Polish - Italian inventor, architect, Egyptologist and instrument maker.

He studied in Padua and Venice. He was a friend of Stefano della Bella.

In 1639 he explored along with the English mathematician John Greaves, the Great Pyramid of Cheops. To 1640-41 he was in Germany and was then invited to the court of Władysław IV Vasa to Poland. 1647/48 he built a 1.5 meter Glider Dragon Volant with four wings, which took off with a cat.

In 1645 he published bilancia Sincera, based on Galileo's manuscript La bilancetta for hydrostatic balance for determining the specific gravity.

Later, he developed a system of units that he published in his Misura universale (Vilnius, 1675). It included by the second pendulum ( 99.4 cm) derived unit length metro cattolico (Universal meters).

With Galileo's former student Stanislaw Pudlowsky and Lucca Jerome / Girolamo Pinocci (* 1612 ) he undertook in Krakow optical experiments, where he discovered irregularities on the surface of Venus.

A part of his self-made, z.T. hollow glass lenses for microscope and telescope, which he 1672 Ismael Boulliau reported that he gave Cardinal Leopoldo de ' Medici. Blaise Pascal's machine and Napiersche computing rods were models for his calculating machine, which he bequeathed to Ferdinando II de ' Medici.