This is the second volume of a series of edited books whose aim is to collect c- tributed papers within a framework that can serve as a collection of persons in MMS (Mechanism and Machine Science). This is a continuation of the first volume that was published in 2008, again combining very ancient and very recent scholars in order to give not only an encyclopaedic character to this project but also to emphasize the significance of MMS over time. This project has the characteristic that the papers illustrate, by recognizing p- sons and their scientific work, mainly technical developments in the historical evolution of the fields that today are grouped in MMS. Thus, emphasis is also given to biographical notes describing efforts and experiences of people who have c- tributed to the technical achievements whose technical survey is the core of each contributed paper. This second volume of the project has been possible thanks to the invited authors who have enthusiastically shared in this initiative and who have spent time and effort in preparing the papers. The stand-alone papers cover the wide field of the History of Mechanical Engineering with specific focus on MMS. I believe that readers will take advantage of the papers in this book and future ones by supplying further satisfaction and motivation for her or his work (historical or not).
"An encyclopaedic work in which the emphasis is placed on figures who have contributed to the technical development of mechanics, understood as machine science. It is a work that may be of interest to both engineers and historians of science and it is useful because it focuses on figures that are missing in many histories of mathematics and science." (María de Paz, Mathematical Reviews, November, 2017)