Beschreibung:

ACCADEMIA DEL CIMENTO. Saggi di naturali esperienzi fatte nell' Accademia del Cimento . Edited by Lorenzo Magalloti. Florence: Giuseppe Cocchini, 1666 [dedication dated 1667]. 2 o (365 x 255 mm). Half-title, title printed in red and black with engraved device of the Academy, errata leaf before index, licence with register at end, final leaf blank, engraved portrait of Grand-Duke Ferdinand II of Tuscany by Lotaringus after F. Spierre, 75 full-page engravings of experimental apparatus printed from 30 copperplates, engraved by Il Modiana possibly after drawings by Stefano della Bella engraved head- and tail-piece vignettes by V. Spada, large historiated woodcut initials. (Portrait supplied from another copy and inlaid, half-title and title soiled and with edges frayed, occasional spotting, dedication leaves browned, some minor marginal dampstaining.) 18th-century plain boards, EDGES UNTRIMMED (backstrip soiled and with a few tears); modern morocco-backed folding case. FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE, with the title dated 1666, of the only publication by the first academy founded for the purpose of conducting scientific experiments. The Accademia del Cimento was founded in 1657 under the patronage of Prince Leopold de'Medici and his older brother Grand Duke Ferdinand II of Tuscany, themselves both amateur scientists. The members of the Academy sought to extend the work of Galileo by performing experiments that would silence any remaining opposition to the scienza nuova . Prince Leopold, who "set the experimental agenda" (Biagioli, Galileo Courtier , Chicago 1993, p. 358) provided the group with the first well-equipped physical sciences laboratory in Europe, and devised some of the methods and instruments used in it. Although active for only a decade, the Academy exerted a lasting influence on the development of experimental scientific methods and devices during the following century. Led by the polymath Giovanni Alfonso Borelli (1608-1679) and Vincenzio Viviani (1622-1703), pupil of Galileo and Torricelli, its members included the naturalist Francesco Redi, the anatomist and geologist Niels Stensen, the astronomer Gian Domenico Cassini, and the linguist and writer Lorenzo Magalloti, who became the secretary and who edited the Saggi . The collection was published anonymously, an expression of the Academy's (or Leopold's) policy of submerging the members' individual identities and presenting itself as a group. "The frequent strong tensions and explicit disagreements recorded in the academicians' private correspondence were made invisible by the Saggi " (Biagioli, p. 360). The essays focus strictly on the identification and description of physical phenomena, and avoid stating any potentially controversial theories or conclusions. Although the Saggi describe only a portion of the experiments carried out by the Academy, omitting some interesting investigations, including observations of comets, they include several scientific novelties: "... the description of the first true thermometer... the first true hygrometer, and an improved barometer, giving also classical experiments on air pressure, experiments on the velocity of sound, radiant heat, phosphorescence, and the first experiments showing the expansion of water in freezing..." (Zeitlinger, Bibliotheca chemico-mathematica , London 1921, 22505). A particularly important discovery recorded in the Saggi is that of the deviation of a pendulum from its true plane of oscillation, which was later used by Foucault as proof of the rotation of the earth. This is one of 725 copies printed on ordinary paper from a total edition of 800, as recorded in surviving correspondence concerning publication of the collection. Dibner, Heralds of Science 82; Middleton, The Experimenters, a Study of the Accademia Cimento 1; Riccardi I(2), 407; Norman 485.