Even before the dawn of the early modern period, lathes had been developed for various purposes, such as turning column drums and brass castings. The Nuremberg Hausbuch der Mendelschen Zwölfbrüderstiftung, for example, contains illustrations produced between 1425 and 1436 of turners, pewterers, and rosary makers at their lathes, driven by a pedal and a spring mounted on a pole or a hand crank (see fig. 1) [7]. The earliest French illustrations (miniatures and stained…