ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

“Ognuno fa i maravigliosi fenomeni della virtù elettrica”. Italian itinerant demonstrators and the diffusion of electrical knowledge in Northern Italy between 1745 and 1755

• In Event: A New Kind of Amusement for Cultivating the Mind: Science Popularisation in Britain and Italy in the Long Eighteenth Century

English Abstract

In the mid-eighteenth century, the diffusion of tribo-electrical machines with rotating glass pieces enabled the discovery of new and spectacular phenomena, such as the transmission of “electrical virtues” over considerable distances, “luminous rains” in rarefied air, and shocks and sparks of a novel and striking intensity. These effects fascinated a remarkably differentiated audience and contributed to the rapid circulation of electrical knowledge across diverse settings: from universities and academies to salons and public squares. The serate elettriche, demonstrations held in aristocratic salons, became fashionable divertissements, attracting both curious laypeople and learned observers, blurring the boundaries between science and spectacle.
Drawing on first-hand reports, such as the Algarotti-inspired novella galante opening the first Italian treatise on electricity, Dell’Elettricismo (1746), and a set of mostly unpublished advertising flyers, this contribution explores these serate: who organized them, the experiments performed (and how these evolved according to new discoveries and inventions), and the social composition of the audience attending.
Finally, this presentation highlights the pivotal contributions of marginal and often-overlooked figures, such as the Italian demonstrators Girolamo and Carlo Antonio Castelnuovo and the Experimental Physics professor Giovanni Poleni, for the diffusion and popularization of theories, practices, and instruments. A new perspective naturally arises: electrical knowledge was not merely imported into the peninsula, as previously thought, but was independently developed through the dynamic interaction among a plurality of local voices, as experimenters, showmen, publics, and audiences.

Author

• Lorenzo Voltolina, University of Padua