Three years after Guidobaldo del Monte, marchese of Montebaroccio, published his Mechanicorum liber (1577), Count Giulio Savorgnano, a military engineer and general of Venetian artillery, had the work translated into Italian. An analysis of the process of this literal translation under the auspices of an engineer reveals a series of intellectual and material translations through which mechanics became a powerful, paradigmatic science--translations between ancient and contemporary knowledge, between geometrical and physical demonstration, between elite and practical learning, and between philosophy and political economy. For Guidobaldo, each of these transformations both depended on and defined how the texts of mechanics were positioned in relation to the everyday practices and temporal goals of mechanical work. This study centers on Guidobaldo's articulation of mechanics from his perspective as a nobleman in the duchy of Urbino and examines his use of social, mathematical, and philosophical authority in h...