This year Croatia marks the 400th anniversary of Vrancic's death, said Marijana Boric of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (HAZU), describing Vrancic as the most important inventor and designer at the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century.
Boric said the exhibition featured copies of the covers of Vrancic's most valuable works that were kept in the NSK's collection of manuscripts and old books.
She said that the NSK Digital Collection included digitalised versions of Vrancic's works such as "Dictionarium quinque nobilissimarum Europae linguarum, Latinae, Italicae, Germanicae, Dalmatiae et Ungaricae", published in Venice in 1595, and "Machinae novae", published in Venice 1615/1616.
Faust Vrancic was born in Sibenik in 1551 and died in Venice in 1617. He was a polymath, linguist, inventor, diplomat, engineer and bishop.
At the end of the 16th century, he wrote a book with drawings of his own or other inventors' redesigned inventions and their descriptions. There were two editions of that book and they differ mainly in the covers and the number of languages used to describe the inventions - "Machinae novae Fausti Verantii Siceni", presumably published in Florence in 1595, and "Machinae novae Fausti Verantii Siceni cum declaratione Latina Italica Hispanica Gallica et Germanica", believed to have been published in 1615 or 1616.
The work contains 49 etchings with 56 different inventions.
Vrancic's technical solutions cover river engineering, bridges, clocks, mills, presses, grain threshing machines, horse-drawn vehicles, and work organisation. Most of these solutions were designed to make human work easier by using draught animals and the energy of water and wind.
The exhibition, organised by the HAZU Foundation and the Croatian Culture Ministry and supported by UNESCO, will be open until November 25.