Entitled: "Three bookes of colloquies concerning the arte of shooting in great and small peeces of artillerie, variable randges, measure, and waight of leaden, yron, and marble stone pellets, minerall saltepeeter, gunpowder of diuers sortes, and the cause why some sortes of gunpower are corned, and some sortes of gunpowder are not corned: written in Italian by Nicholas Tartaglia, 1588." Niccolo Fontana Tartaglia (1499 - 1557) was an Italian mathematician, engineer, surveyor and translator. He published many books, including the first Italian translations of Archimedes and Euclid, and an acclaimed compilation of mathematics. He was the first to apply mathematics to the investigation of the paths of cannonballs, known as ballistics, in his Nova Scientia (A New Science); his work was later partially validated and partially superseded by Galileo's studies on falling bodies. He also published a treatise on retrieving sunken ships.