“Collected with great care”

The article introduces the prerequisites for the creation and features of the book "Theatrum machinarum novum...", published in the second half of the 17th century in Nuremberg, the oldest book publishing center of the Upper Rhine region. The article also considers that the treatise once belonged to private libraries: of Robert Areskin, the life doctor of Peter I; the collegiate adviser Fyodor Mikhailovich Bessonov and the world-famous photographer Andrey Osipovich Karelin.