Tito Livio Burattini
Tito Livio Burattini (, 8 March 1617 – 17 November 1681) was an inventor, architect, Egyptologist, scientist, instrument-maker, traveller, engineer, and nobleman, who spent his working life in Poland and Lithuania. He was born in Agordo, Italy, and studied in Padua and Venice. In 1639, he explored the Great Pyramid of Giza with English mathematician John Greaves; both Burattini and Sir Isaac Newton used measurements made by Greaves in an attempt to accurately determine the circumference of the earth. For Germany in 1641, the court of King Ladislaus IV invited him to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In Warsaw, Burattini built a model aircraft with four fixed glider wings in 1647. Described as "four pairs of wings attached to an elaborate 'dragon'", it was said to have successfully lifted a cat in 1648 but not Burattini himself. According to Clive Hart's The Prehistory of Flight, he promised that "only the most minor injuries" would result from landing the craft. He later developed an early system of measurement based on time, similar to today's International System of Units; he published it in his book (lit. "universal measure") in 1675 at Vilnius. His system includes the (lit. "catholic [i.e. universal] metre"), a unit of