Historical Math and Science Blog

  As a follow-up to my recent post about the notes of the Accademia del Cimento , I've transcribed, formatted, and roughly translated (meaning Google Translate + light editing) excerpts from the diary of that same Academy, relating to electricity among other things. This includes a roughly translated and slightly edited version of the Notizie  of Giovannia Tagione Tozzetti (see previous post) which features the Essays  combined with the relevant excerpts from the diary. This took an outrageous amount of time to assemble, and the translating is in a terrible state, it's more of a convenience for anyone reading it to get the gist, so you don't have to put it into Google Translate yourself. I don't know Italian! The diary entries I used were from Ms. Gal. 262 ff. 61v-81r, 116v-117r, and some sheets from later relating to vacuum experiments. Full citation: Magalotti, Lorenzo. “Gal. 262 - V, Posteriori. 3, Accademia Del Cimento. Fisica Sperimentale.”  Firenze, n.d. I cite...

 I've been working late nights this week, practicing my transcribing. The reason is, I'd like to transcribe the handwritten notes used by the Accademia del cimento  (ca. 1657-1667), an early modern learned academy comprising a dozen or so members that published one of the first "lab manual"s for physics. Their publication, the Saggi  (Italian for essays ) was originally written in Italian, then translated to Latin and English. It was popular then, and it draws a fair amount of scholarly attention even today.  The manuscripts are available from the Museo Galileo archives, and they're pretty voluminous. Fortunately, the electrical experiments are fairly brief (as you'd expect around 1660), especially compared to the experiments in hydraulics and pneumatics, which is what the Saggi  are probably best remembered for.  The notes that I've located so far come under the title  Gal. 263 - V, Posteriori. 4, Accademia del Cimento. Fisica sperimentale. fol. 84r -...