This is the ?rst volume of a series of edited books whose aim is to collect contributed papers in a framework that can serve as a dictionary of names of individuals who have made contributions to the discipline of MMS (Me- anism and Machine Science). This dictionary project has the peculiarity that, through descriptions of the ideas and work of these individuals, the papers will illustrate mainly technical developments in the historical evolution of the individual ?elds that today de?ne the scope of MMS. Thus the core of each contribution will be a survey of biographical notes describing the efforts and experiences of these people. Finding appropriate technical experts as authors for such papers and - couraging them to write them has been a challenge; it is a demanding and time-consuming effort to produce such in-depth articles that delve deeply into the historical background of their topics of expertise. This ?rst volume of the dictionary project has been possible thanks to the invited authors who have enthusiastically shared the initiative and have spent time and effort in prep- ing papers that have the novel characteristics of survey and historical notes. The papers in this volume cover the wide ?eld of the History of Mechanical Engineering with speci?c focus on MMS. I believe that a reader who takes advantage of the papers in this book, as well as future ones, will ?nd further satisfaction and motivation for her or his work (historical or not).
About the Author:

Marco Ceccarelli was born in Rome in 1958. He received his mechanical engineering degree cum laude in 1982 at the University "La Sapienza" of Rome. At the same University he completed a Ph.D. in Applied Mechanics in 1988. In 1987 he was visiting scholar at Stanford University, U.S.A., and in 1990 he received a CNR-NATO annual grant as visiting professor at the Technical University of Valencia, Spain. Since 1990 he teaches courses on Mechanics of Machinery and Mechanisms and Mechanics of Robots at the School of Engineering at the University of Cassino. Since 1996 he is Director of LARM, the Laboratory of Robotics and Mechatronics of DiMSAT, the Department of Mechanics, Structures, Environment and Territory at the University of Cassino. Since 2001 he has been appointed Full Professor of Mechanics of Machinery and Mechanisms at the University of Cassino. From 2003 to 2005 he has been Vice Director of DiMSAT.
He is member of ASME (The American Society of Mechanical Engineers), AIMETA (Italian Society for Theoretical and Applied Mechanics), AEIM (Spanish Society of Mechanical Engineers), SIRJ (Italian Association of Robotics and Automation), IEEE (the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), FeIbIM (Iberoamerican Federation for Mechanical Engineering).

He is author or co-author of more than two hundreds and fifty papers, which have been presented at Conferences or published in national and international journals.
More information at the web page
http: llwebuser.unicas.itlweblarmllarmindex.htm