Experiments concerning air pressure and the void and a look at the Accademia's internal workings

Abstract

In June and August 1657, the Accademia del Cimento began to perform numerous experiments involving Torricelli’s barometer and questioning traditional beliefs about the pressure of air and the impossibility of the void. One could conduct an investigation of the academicians’work in this field relying solely on the experiments they reported in the Saggi, but this would hardly do justice to the natural philosophical issues involved in the construction and interpretation of the Torricellian barometer. We should instead consider the variety of positions surrounding studies in pneumatics during the seventeenth century. Therefore, this case study does not begin in 1657 when the academicians performed their first barometric experiments, but in 1644 when Evangelista Torricelli claimed to have constructed the first barometer, and sparked a flurry of activity among his colleagues in other parts of Europe.