La materia del fuoco. Lettere a Giraldi e Nollet (auteur Raimondo di Sangro en bewerking Leen Spruit)

Abstract

In the letters to Giovanni Giraldi and to Abbot Jean-Antoine Nollet, Raimondo di Sangro reconstructs the discovery of a substance, which has surprising properties and which at the same time is difficult to explain. The substance is easily lit in the vicinity of a flame, it burns without almost heating up and apparently without being consumed. In a debate with the major physicists of his time Raimondo shows that the fire is not produced by phosphor, it is different from the flame generated by the electric machine, and it lasts a lot because it feeds from igneous particles present in the surrounding atmosphere, defined as ‘elementary fire’. And with this precise term Sangro refers to the debate between the end of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century on the problem of the modes of combustion, in general, and more specifically the theory of phlogiston. In the period immediately following the publication of the letters to Nollet the Prince was informed about the discovery of an antique lamp in Munich, which at the time of the excavation was still burning. This discovery inspired Sangro to draw up the Dissertation. In this work he gives an analysis divided by three topics: a review on sepulchral lumens dating back to antiquity and found since the fifteenth century in Italy and in other European countries (which owe their luminosity to the salts extracted from human bones which ignite easily, and hence are nothing but phosphors), an account of his observations and experiments with the liquid delivered to him by peers in Germany, and a final note on the differences between these sepulchral lights and the ‘perpetual’ light he recently invented. In the letters to Giovanni Giraldi and to Abbot Jean-Antoine Nollet, Raimondo di Sangro reconstructs the discovery of a substance, which has surprising properties and which at the same time is difficult to explain. The substance is easily lit in the vicinity of a flame, it burns without almost heating up and apparently without being consumed. In a debate with the major physicists of his time Raimondo shows that the fire is not produced by phosphor, it is different from the flame generated by the electric machine, and it lasts a lot because it feeds from igneous particles present in the surrounding atmosphere, defined as ‘elementary fire’. And with this precise term Sangro refers to the debate between the end of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century on the problem of the modes of combustion, in general, and more specifically the theory of phlogiston. In the period immediately following the publication of the letters to Nollet the Prince was informed about the discovery of an antique lamp in Munich, which at the time of the excavation was still burning. This discovery inspired Sangro to draw up the Dissertation. In this work he gives an analysis divided by three topics: a review on sepulchral lumens dating back to antiquity and found since the fifteenth century in Italy and in other European countries (which owe their luminosity to the salts extracted from human bones which ignite easily, and hence are nothing but phosphors), an account of his observations and experiments with the liquid delivered to him by peers in Germany, and a final note on the differences between these sepulchral lights and the ‘perpetual’ light he recently invented. In the letters to Giovanni Giraldi and to Abbot Jean-Antoine Nollet, Raimondo di Sangro reconstructs the discovery of a substance, which has surprising properties and which at the same time is difficult to explain. The substance is easily lit in the vicinity of a flame, it burns without almost heating up and apparently without being consumed. In a debate with the major physicists of his time Raimondo shows that the fire is not produced by phosphor, it is different from the flame generated by the electric machine, and it lasts a lot because it feeds from igneous particles present in the surrounding atmosphere, defined as ‘elementary fire’. And with this precise term Sangro refers to the debate between the end of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century on the problem of the modes of combustion, in general, and more specifically the theory of phlogiston. In the period immediately following the publication of the letters to Nollet the Prince was informed about the discovery of an antique lamp in Munich, which at the time of the excavation was still burning. This discovery inspired Sangro to draw up the Dissertation. In this work he gives an analysis divided by three topics: a review on sepulchral lumens dating back to antiquity and found since the fifteenth century in Italy and in other European countries (which owe their luminosity to the salts extracted from human bones which ignite easily, and hence are nothing but phosphors), an account of his observations and experiments with the liquid delivered to him by peers in Germany, and a final note on the differences between these sepulchral lights and the ‘perpetual’ light he recently invented. In the letters to Giovanni Giraldi and to Abbot Jean-Antoine Nollet, Raimondo di Sangro reconstructs the discovery of a substance, which has surprising properties and which at the same time is difficult to explain. The substance is easily lit in the vicinity of a flame, it burns without almost heating up and apparently without being consumed. In a debate with the major physicists of his time Raimondo shows that the fire is not produced by phosphor, it is different from the flame generated by the electric machine, and it lasts a lot because it feeds from igneous particles present in the surrounding atmosphere, defined as ‘elementary fire’. And with this precise term Sangro refers to the debate between the end of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century on the problem of the modes of combustion, in general, and more specifically the theory of phlogiston. In the period immediately following the publication of the letters to Nollet the Prince was informed about the discovery of an antique lamp in Munich, which at the time of the excavation was still burning. This discovery inspired Sangro to draw up the Dissertation. In this work he gives an analysis divided by three topics: a review on sepulchral lumens dating back to antiquity and found since the fifteenth century in Italy and in other European countries (which owe their luminosity to the salts extracted from human bones which ignite easily, and hence are nothing but phosphors), an account of his observations and experiments with the liquid delivered to him by peers in Germany, and a final note on the differences between these sepulchral lights and the ‘perpetual’ light he recently invented.