Department of Pure and Applied Sciences

It is well known that the induction coil was invented in the mid-1830s, but its most significant improvements were made between the late 1830s and 1851. During these years a lot of research was aimed at improving the functionality and effectiveness of the device. In Italy one of the very first attempts at improvement was made first by an instrument maker from Milan, Carlo Dell’Acqua, and secondly, by a priest from Verona, Vincenzo Vignola. In 1851, Vignola was awarded the gold medal from the Academy of Agriculture, Arts and Commerce of Verona for having introduced important and useful changes to the Callan electromotor. This event opened up the discovery of a number of very interesting, unpublished hand-written documents, as well as the discovery of the device itself, provided with an almost unique self-acting commutator-interrupter system. Today this apparatus is preserved at the Physics Museum “Antonio Maria Traversi” in Venice.

The Bourbon government began building its first telegraph lines in 1852. The first line starting in Naples headed northward, in order to reach the town of Terracina, a border station in the Papal State as well as a junction point with the papal telegraphic lines leading to Rome. At the same
time, other telegraph lines headed south in order to reach the regions of Puglia and Calabria, and in particular the city of Reggio (Calabria), which would then allow Sicily to be connected as well, by means of a submarine cable. Intentions were not immediately followed by facts and the Naples-Reggio line was only completed with some delay, in 1856. At the beginning of 1857 the Bourbon central government appointed a highly skilled specialist, Ernesto D’Amico, as Royal Director (Delegate) in charge of the
development of the electric telegraph network service in Sicily. The complex technical-administrative work started promptly and the first “temporary provisions for the performance of the service” were enforced. In December 1857, an Electric T elegraphy Directorate-General and a
Scientific Committee formed by physicists, chemists and mechanics were each established in both Naples and Palermo. In Palermo, both the Directorate-General and the Scientific Committee dealt with many crucial matters, from the training of the Royal Telegraphic Corps and of local staff, the dispatch taxes and tariffs, the choice of equipment and materials, up to the classification and organization of telegraphic stations. As for the layout
of the network lines, coastal routes were chosen. The reason was that the coastal routes had been used until then for visual or optical telegraphy, an ancient, well-organized and well-established coastal communication
practice that had allowed for a good defence of the island against raids from the sea. The first Palermo-Messina line was opened in June 1857, and by the end of September, the entire telegraph network was completed, all along
the coastal perimeter. At the same time, in January and June 1858, two submarine cables were laid along the Reggio-Messina Strait. After ups and downs related to break—downs, malfunctions, inadequate performance and
new cable-laying works (nineteen in total!), the connection with the mainland, until then managed by sea, was finally achieved by cable in 1863.

The history of the collection of scientific instruments, today
preserved in the Physics Museum of the Liceo Bonaventura Secusio” in Caltagirone, will be here briefly reconstructed. The Liceo was founded in 1864, after the closure of the Liceo “Ferdinando” in 1862, which had been created in 1858 within the Reale Accademia degli Studi. While the latter arose from the ashes of a Jesuit college in the late eighteenth century. The historical collection preserves an important unit of scientific instruments, bought in Paris in the years 1844-1846 from the French instrument maker
Louis-Joseph Deleuil. This unit was part of the Physics Laboratory of the Reale Accademia degli Studi. The instrumental collection of the Liceo dates back to 1864. Thereafter it was enriched by new scientific instruments from Italy and abroad. In particular, in the years 1885-1886, as many as one hundred and forty-two scientific instruments were purchased in Florence, at the “Società Tecnica di Ingegneria ed Industria”, managed by Vimercati.

This work is born out of the accidental finding, in a repository of the ancient “Oliveriana Library” in the city of Pesaro (Italy), of a small mahogany box containing three specimens of a submarine telegraph cable built for the Italian government by the Henley Company of London. This cable was used to connect, by means of the telegraph, in 1864, the Ports of Otranto and Avlona (today Valona, Albania). As a scientific relic, the Oliveriana memento perfectly fits in the scene of that rich chapter of the history of long-distance electrical communications known as submarine telegraphy. It is known that thanks to the English, the issue of submarine electric communication had an impressive development in Europe from the second half of the nineteenth century on. Less known is the fact that, in this emerging technology field, Italy before unification was able to carve out a nonnegligible role for itself, although primarily political. Particularly, two states took advantage of that: the House of Savoia in Piedmont and Sardinia and the House of Bourbon in Sicily and Puglia.
Not having at the time, the means, the know-how and the money, but being aware of the strategic role of their own territories, the two dynamic Italian States were able to skilfully stipulate numerous agreements to layout some underwater sections. The pacts were made mostly with France and England which had strong and driving needs to keep in contact, through the telegraph, with their colonial possessions. The House of Savoia was the first to use the
new technology. Thanks to an agreement with France, in 1854 they began to layout a submarine telegraph cable along the stretch connecting La Spezia to Corsica. After that, many more cables were laid with active participation, besides the Sardinian States, also of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. This work will consider mainly the decade of 1854-1864, a period when the submarine telegraphy business began and developed in Italy.

Summary — This work contains the complete transcription of seventeen handwritten letters, written between 1837 and 1856, from the Veronese scientist Gaetano Spandri (1796-
1859) to the Jesuit physicist of the Roman College Giambattista Pianciani (1784-1862), guarded at the Historical Archives of the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. The transcription of the letters is preceded by a brief introduction, some biographical information on the two scientists and a summary of the contents of the correspondence that we consider most relevant for a history of physical sciences in Italy in the first half of the nineteenth century. In particular, the letters provide valuable information on the activities of Spandri as a
talented experimenter and maker of scientific instruments.

Riassunto — Questo lavoro presenta la trascrizione integrale di diciassette lettere manoscritte, scritte tra il 1837 e il 1856, dallo scienziato veronese Gaetano Spandri (1796-1859) al fisico gesuita del Collegio Romano Giambattista Pianciani (1784-1862), rinvenute presso l’Archivio Storico della Pontificia Universita Gregoriana di Roma. La trascrizione delle lettere e preceduta da una breve introduzione, da alcune notizie biografiche sui due scienziati e da una sintesi dei contenuti della corrispondenza da noi ritenuti piu rilevanti ai fini di una Storia delle Scienze Fisiche in Italia nella prima meta del XIX secolo. In particolare le lettere forniscono preziose informazioni sulle attivita dello Spandri quale fine sperimentatore e costruttore di strumenti scientifici.

We are presenting the scientific work of Giovanni Silio Borremans (1756-1830), a physicist almost unknown to Science historians, who worked in the city of Caltagirone (Sicily) from 1775 until his death, in 1830. Intense archival work has been carried out on this interesting scientist; it has allowed us to discover many unpublished and unknown documents that have shed new light on Silio’s life and on his scientific activity. As visual evidence, a good number of archive images have been inserted in the text. We owe to Silio the origins of experimental physics in Caltagirone, whose good results will be appreciated after his death by his most illustrious scholar, the physicist and naturalist Emmanuello Taranto Rosso. Silio’s work started in Caltagirone in 1775 when a teaching chair in experimental physics was established at the ancient R. Academy Ferdinando IV; he held it for more than fifty years. Some manuscripts, scientific works and the dictated lessons of this learned and erudite man were found and transcribed by his most famous student, the already mentioned Taranto Rosso, who later will become his “natural” successor in the teaching of experimental Physic at the Academy.

We are going to trace the ideas and experiments, since Galileo and until Léon Foucault, aimed at proving the Earth’s rotation. Galileo - incorrectly - tried to explain the phenomenon of tidal forward and backward flow with the Earth’s rotation. After Galileo, the cannon shots towards the zenith and the experiments on falling objects were considered reliable evidence. At the end of the XVII century, Newton had the idea of showing the Royal Society, through Hooke, the proof of the eastward deflection of a falling body from a considerable height. In the XVIII century, new geophysical proofs of the Earth’s rotation were available. At the end of the century, in Italy, Guglielmini measured the deviations towards the east and south of small leaden balls falling inside the Asinelli Tower. The experiment was first repeated in other Italian cities and then, in the first decades of the XIX century, it was proposed again in Germany. Theoretically, Laplace and Gauss, though with different approaches, came to the correct mathematical interpretation of the phenomenon. In the following years, new mechanical proofs were sought but the effects due to earth rotation were too small to provide any certainty. Only Foucault managed to solve the problem.

In the first half of the 19th century, a positive technical-scientific environment developed in Verona, thanks to the fortunate presence of the
physicist Giuseppe Zamboni, designer of several and important scientific
instruments, professor of experimental physics and member of the "Academy of Agriculture". Zamboni was able to gather around his lively scientific activities a good deal of local people devoted most of all to precision mechanics and to the study of experimental sciences and their apparatuses. These people's activities mainly revolved around two important institutions in the city of Verona: the "Imperial real Liceo Convitto" and the "Academy of Agriculture, Commerce and Arts". Among these people, Gaetano Spandri's work stands out: he was a friend and collaborator of Zamboni's, an enthusiast of physical sciences, a private collector and a maker of scientific instruments. The paper will also consider other Veronese mechanicians' scientific activity, who worked with the "Academy of Agriculture" and with Zamboni, contributing to the creation of innovative scientific instruments.

Preliminary the figure of Abbot Feliciano Scarpellini and the scientific envi ronment in Rome in the first half of the XIX century are introduced. It is then analysed the life and work of the physicist and philosopher Giambattista Pianciani (1784-1862) of the Society of Jesus. Pianciani was in Rome among the most peculiar representatives of that cultural program aimed at countering the theses of Enlightenment materialism through a process of conciliation and justification of scientific discoveries with Catholic doctrine. This apologetic and concordist program started under Pius VII, also continued during the pontificate of Leo XVI. In the wake of this peculiar apologetic program, the controversy that, around the mid-nineteenth century, arose in the Roman College between neotomists and some scientists of the order, for example, Angelo Secchi, is also discussed. Finally, the specific concordist program developed by Pianciani is discussed. This program aimed to reconcile the biblical account of the world's creation with the scientific results that came from the studies of natural cosmogony.

We present the analysis of the muon events with all muon multiplicities collected during 21804 hours of operation of the first LVD tower. The measured depth-angular distribution of muon intensities has been used to obtain the normalization factor, A, the power index, γ, of the primary all-nucleon spectrum and the ratio, Rc, of prompt muon flux to that of π−mesons-the main parameters which determine the spectrum of cosmic ray muons at the sea level. The value of γ = 2.77 ± 0.05 (68% C.L.) and Rc < 2.0 • 10 −3 (95% C.L.) have been obtained. The upper limit to the prompt muon flux favours the models of charm production based on QGSM and the dual parton model.

We are presenting the scientific work of Giovanni Silio Borremans (1756-1830), a physicist almost unknown to Science historians, who worked in the city of Caltagirone (Sicily) from 1775 until his death, in 1830. An intense archival work has been carried out on this interesting scientist; it has allowed us to discover many unpublished and unknown documents that have shed a new light on Silio's life and on his scientific activity. As visual evidence, a good number of archive images have been inserted in the text. We owe to Silio the origins of experimental physics in Caltagirone, whose good results will be appreciated after his death by his most illustrious scholar, the physicist and naturalist Emmanuello Taranto Rosso. Silio's work started in Caltagirone in 1775 when a teaching chair in experimental physics was established at the ancient R. Academy Ferdinando IV; he held it for more than fifty years. Some manuscripts, scientific works and the dictated lessons of this learned and erudite man were found and transcribed by his most famous student, the already mentioned Taranto Rosso, who later will, become his "natural" successor in the teaching of experimental Physic at the Academy.

This work is born out of the accidental finding, in a repository of the ancient "Oliveriana Library" in the city of Pesaro (Italy), of a small mahogany box containing three specimens of a submarine telegraph cable built for the Italian government by the Henley Company of London. This cable was used to connect, by means of the telegraph, in 1864, the Ports of Otranto and Avlona (today Valona, Albania). As a scientific relic, the Oliveriana memento perfectly fits in the scene of that rich chapter of the history of long distance electrical communications known as submarine telegraphy. It is known that, thanks to the English, the issue of submarine electric communication had an impressive development in Europe from the second half of the nineteenth century on. Less known is the fact that, in this emerging technology field, Italy before unification was able to carve out a non-negligible role for itself, although primarily political. Particularly, two states took advantage of that: the House of Savoia in Piedmont and Sardinia and the House of Bourbon in Sicily and Puglia. Not having at the time, the means, the know-how and the money, but being aware of the strategic role of their own territories, the two dynamic Italian States were able to skilfully stipulate numerous agreements to lay out some underwater sections. The pacts were made mostly with France and England which had strong and driving needs to keep in contact, through the telegraph, with their colonial possessions. The House of Savoia was the first to use the new technology. Thanks to an agreement with France, in 1854 they began to lay out a submarine telegraph cable along the stretch connecting La Spezia to Corsica. After that, many more cables were laid with the active participation, besides the Sardinian States, also of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. This work will consider mainly the decade of 1854-1864, a period when the submarine telegraphy business began and developed in Italy.

Il contributo intende partire da una disamina di alcuni dei principali studi relativi agli spazi urbani al fine di evidenziare come oggi nuovi processi sociali e l'introduzione delle moderne tecnologie dell'informazione e della comunicazione (ICT) portano a trasformare le tradizionali categorizzazioni tra diverse tipologie di spazi urbani. In particolare, la possibilità di una connessione costante degli individui conduce a un superamento dei confini fisici e materiali insiti all'interno dell'idea stessa di "spazio", portando a far incontrare, mescolare e comunicare diverse categorie di spazi. Emergono quindi nuove forme di spazio urbano. Nel contributo si affronta, ad esempio, la trasformazione della nozione di confine, soprattutto se posta in relazione con quelle di soglia, di limite e di esperienza. Un concetto, quello di confine, che diventa sempre più labile e sfumato, proprio sulla base della presenza degli elementi culturali e tecnologici, creando al contempo nuovi processi sociali. Gli esempi riportati fanno affiorare la necessità di nuovi dispositivi e di un design in grado di affrontare le complessità emergenti.

Preliminary the figure of Abbot Feliciano Scarpellini and the scientific environment in Rome in the first half of the XIX century are introduced. It is then analysed the life and work of the physicist and philosopher Giambattista Pianciani (1784-1862) of the Society of Jesus. Pianciani was in Rome among the most peculiar representatives of that cultural program aimed at countering the theses of Enlightenment materialism through a process of conciliation and justification of scientific discoveries with Catholic doctrine. This apologetic and concordist program started under Pius VII, also continued during the pontificate of Leo XVI. In the wake of this peculiar apologetic program, the controversy that, around the mid-nineteenth century, arose in the Roman College between neotomists and some scientists of the order, for example, Angelo Secchi, is also discussed. Finally, the specific concordist program developed by Pianciani is discussed. This program aimed to reconcile the biblical ac...

Gaetano Spandri (1796–1859) was a “diligent scholar of the physical sciences,” a private collector and maker of scientific instruments who worked in Verona in the first half of the nineteenth century. Born in Verona, the city famous as the setting of Shakespeare’s iconic masterpiece Romeo and Juliet Spandri was primarily a physicist and astronomer, but he was also interested in meteorology and natural sciences. The main sources of information about his scientific work are handwritten papers, parts of his private correspondence, and scientific reports kept at the Verona Academy of Agriculture. For most of his life, he collaborated with the physicist Giuseppe Zamboni and was in contact with important physicists and astronomers of his time. His private apartment was equipped with a rich library, an astronomical and meteorological observatory, and a large room where he gathered a rich and important collection of scientific instruments.

In 1839, collaborating with physicist Luigi Pacinotti, the Italian physician and historian of medicine Francesco Puccinotti announced a successful measurement of the existence of electrovital currents in live warm- and cold-blooded animals. To perform this measurement, they used the astatic galvanometer developed by Leopoldo Nobili. The experimental demonstrations took place in Pisa on the morning of October 13, 1839 as part of the First Congress of Italian Scientists. The experiment had been carefully prepared and tested ahead of the Congress in June and July of the same year. Two congressional commissions, composed respectively of doctors and physicists, discussed the results of the experiments and disclosed conflicting views. The physicists diplomatically expressed doubt, saying that the current measured might have been similar, although weaker, to that found in already dead animals and therefore could be traced to physicochemical processes. A debate developed at the Congress and continued afterwards. This significant episode helped keep the question of animal electricity open in Italy, stimulating the development of new electrophysiological studies in the following decade.