'Made in the Galleries of His Most Serene Highness, Florence'. Conflicts in instrument invention at the Medici court: the pendulum clock, and the Accademia del Cimento.

This essay proposes that the only publication of the Accademia del Cimento, referred to as Saggi, had as one of its main goals the celebration of the House of Medici's paternity of cutting-edge experiments and instruments during the reign of Grand Duke Ferdinando II. These included Ferdinando II's t...

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Publicado en:Annals of Science Vol. 83; no. 2; pp. 279 - 326
Autor principal: Zanetti, Cristiano
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Taylor & Francis Ltd Apr2026
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      dt: Apr2026
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        10.1080/00033790.2024.2426814
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        atl: 'Made in the Galleries of His Most Serene Highness, Florence'. Conflicts in instrument invention at the Medici court: the pendulum clock, and the Accademia del Cimento.
      aug:
        au: Zanetti, Cristiano
        affil:
          Ca' Foscari, University of Venice, Venice, Italy
          Caltech, Pasadena, CA, USA
      su:
        Pendulum clocks
        Scientific apparatus & instruments
        Inventions
        Hygrometers
        Barometers
      sug:
        subj:
          Pendulum clocks
          Scientific apparatus & instruments
          Inventions
          Hygrometers
          Barometers
      keyword:
        Accademia del Cimento
        Artisanal knowledge
        Campani brothers
        Christiaan Huygens
        Early modern invention debates
        Florentine scientific instruments
        Francesco Generini
        Galileo's clock
        Instrumental epistemology
        Johann Philipp Treffler
        Medici court
        Pendulum clock invention
        Saggi di Naturali Esperienze
        Vincenzo Viviani
      ab: This essay proposes that the only publication of the Accademia del Cimento, referred to as Saggi, had as one of its main goals the celebration of the House of Medici's paternity of cutting-edge experiments and instruments during the reign of Grand Duke Ferdinando II. These included Ferdinando II's thermometers and hygrometers, Torricelli's experiment and barometer, and Galileo's pendulum as a clock-regulator. It seems that this agenda went unnoticed, not at the time of its initial circulation, but rather in modern historiography. Christiaan Huygens's challenged invention of the pendulum clock provides a case study to explore the agenda of this publication and the problem of defining an invention in seventeenth-century Europe. This paper presents for the first time the document that attests to when the first specimen of Huygens's clock arrived in Florence, disproving the previously believed date of September 1657. The paper argues that over the last two centuries, this error has made the Medici narratives of this dispute appear inconsistent and marginalized them. In light of this new find, they must be reconsidered.
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    language: English
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