Galileo and the Boboli Fontanieri: The Knowledge of the Hydraulic Pumps between Philosophers and Practitioners (2008)
The discovery of a maximum limit of the height to which water can be raised by suction pumps was first published and accurately described by Galileo in his Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences. The difficult historical reconstruction of the origins of such a discovery, which the Pisan mathematician ascribed to some practitioners, has been so far overlooked, whereas the discussion of Galileo?s testimony has preferred to focus on the later invention of the barometer rather than on the development of the knowledge concerning hydraulic machines in the 16th and 17th centuries. Through a discussion of works by Cardano, Agricola, Ramelli, Della Porta, Salomon de Caus, I have tried to single out their main ideas about the suction pumps. From this perspective Galileo's conception, as it appears in the letters exchanged with Baliani and in the Discourses, stands out as utterly original and new, and shows how even in this case the knowledge built up during previous centuries could be applied to a new context of problems which, though no longer that of the writers of books on machines, is however not yet that which will emerge with Torricell?s later experiments.
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