Boyle and The Spring of Air
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Outline

  • Prep: From Mining Pumps to the "Air Pump"
  • The emergence of scientific institutions and the Royal Society
  • Who was Robert Boyle?
  • A Demonstration of an air-pump by Mr. Boyle's assistant
  • Discussion: Boyle's experimental conclusions
  • Debate

    VISUALS
      From Mining Pumps
    1. pumping water from mines (Agricola, De re Metallica, 1542)
    2. Simon Stevin and the hydrostatic paradox
    3. Torricelli and "his" tube
    4. Marin Mersenne & Blaise Pascal and the Puy de Dome [Iowa Inst. of Hydraulic Research, Univ. of Iowa]
    5. Pascal on air pressure(1663) [Iowa Inst. of Hydraulic Research, Univ. of Iowa]
    6. literally, a "sea" of air [Iowa Inst. of Hydraulic Research, Univ. of Iowa]
    7. Madgeburg spheres
    8. Robert Boyle
    9. Lismore Castle
    10. Boyle's "air pump"

      The Rise of Scientific Institutions

    11. Leonardo da Vinci [Liber Liber, Italy] and one of his artillery inventions
      alchemist and hermetic philosophy
    12. Jean Batista Della Porta
    13. William Gilbert
    14. Accademia dei Lincei
    15. correspondence networks: Marin Mersenne and Fabri Peiresc, w/ letter from Galileo [Michael John Gorman, Stanford]
    16. Philosophical College John Wilkins and John Wallis [The Media Drome]
    17. Accademia del Cimento [coat of arms, Ugo Schiff] [Gaspero Martellini, 'Una riunione dell'Accademia del Cimento', Florence, IMSS]
    18. Royal Society [Thomas Sprat's History (1667)]
    19. early proceedings
    20. French Academie des Sciences imagined visit by Louis XIV

    21. Robert Boyle
    22. [Robert Hooke] and Denis Papin, Boyle's "assistants" [photo of model of St. Paul's - Allan Matthews]
    23. Boyle's air pump

    24. Thomas Shadwell

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