Jacob Leupold

Jacob Leupold was a German physicist, mathematician, instrument maker, mining commissioner and engineer, born on 22 July 1674 and dying on 12 January 1727, who wrote the seminal book Theatrum Machinarum Generale. He built many of the instruments needed for experimental physics, and in 1699 his interests turned fully to mechanics and mathematics. In 1701 he took a post as an economist at the George Military Hospital, which gave him a regular income but little free time. He is credited as an early inventor of the air pump, designed his first in 1705 and published Antlia pneumatica illustrata in 1707, and in 1711, on the advice of Leibniz, the Prussian Academy of Sciences acquired his pump, of which he became a member in 1715. From 1720 he worked on the Theatrum Machinarum, the first systematic analysis of mechanical engineering, in ten illustrated volumes published in Leipzig from 1724 to 1739, which includes a design for a high-pressure non-condensing steam engine.