It is to the Italian astronomer, forced in old age by the Inquisition to turn aside from the more dangerous study of the machinery of the heavens, that we owe the first exposition of many of the problems of mechanics and statics, published... in 1638. Not only did Galileo put together whatever the sixteenth century had learned in the sciences affecting building construction, but from his study of the bending strength of a beam there dates a new branch of science—the theory of the strength of materials.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "It is to the Italian astronomer, forced in old age by the Inquisition to turn aside from the more dangerous study of the machinery of the heavens, that we owe the first exposition of many of the problems of mechanics and statics, published... in 1638. Not only did Galileo put together whatever the sixteenth century had learned in the sciences affecting building construction, but from his study of the bending strength of a beam there dates a new branch of science—the theory of the strength of materials." in the context of "T. K. Derry & Trevor I. Williams, A Short History of Technology: From the Earliest Times to A.D. 1900 (1960) Ch.5, Building Construction, "Building from the Renaissance to the Eighteenth Century"" to mean that wisdom is timeless.