Leon Battista Alberti’s Bombard Problem in Ludi matematici: Geometry and Warfare

A sixteen-folio treatise by fifteenth-century polymath Leon Battista Alberti, entitled Ludi matematici, contains an explanation of how to aim a bombard using a device that Alberti calls an ‘‘equilibra.’’ In this article the authors will examine Alberti’s exposition of and solution to the bombard problem, at last providing what they believe to be the correct interpretation of it; set Alberti’s problem and the instrument he uses in its solution in their proper place in the history of artillery and the science of ballistics; and highlight the avantgarde nature of Alberti’s scientific thought.