The Cannons of Enlightenment
Niccolò Tartaglia and the experimental method
Most people have never heard of Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia. Born about 1500 in Venice, right when gunpowder artillery was becoming prominent on land and sea, he was a poor man’s son that died wealthy in 1557, a prominent expert in all forms of gunpowder artillery. Tartaglia was the very model of the modern, self-made man, someone whose unique understandi…
