Antonio Lo Re: Mechanical Engineering in Agriculture

Abstract

In light of recent historiographic guidelines that have identified machines as the prime means by which the Industrial Revolution spread to the Italian countryside, this article explains the works and studies of Antonio Lo Re (1857- 1920). With his ability to combine teaching, scientific research, and technolo gical applications in a complex district like the Italian Captainate, Lo Re played a leading role not only in the agrarian science of his times, but also in related technologies, with particular attention to the machinery that the increasingly flourishing European—and, to a more modest extent, also Italian—industry in the second half of the 19 th century devoted to agricultural production. More over, his manuals contain valuable sketches and drawings useful in recon structing the history of agricultural machinery of the period.