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Room XV. Pneumatics and hydrostatics << previous room | next room >>  
Room XV presentation
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Room XV presents an important collection of air pumps and hydraulic devices. After Torricelli's famous experiment in 1644, air pumps were among the most important instruments available to natural philosophers. They were used with a series of accessories for performing a wide range of experiments in a vacuum. Among the oldest and more interesting are those described, toward the mid-eighteenth century, by the French abbot Jean-Antoine Nollet and by the Dutchman Willem Jacob 's Gravesande. Others dating from the early nineteenth century remained in use—at least for teaching purposes—until the early twentieth century. Hydraulics is represented by many demonstrational devices such as the Archimedean screw, hydraulic pumps, and fountains of various kinds, which—like the model attributed to Hero—were invariably included in the scientific cabinets of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. A particularly curious apparatus is Carlo Castelli's pump, used in the early nineteenth century, of which this is one of the very few surviving copies.

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Air pump, Nollet type (Inv. 1534) Single-barrel exhausting and compressing pump (Inv. 1535) Mercury pump (Inv. 1530) Mercury pump (Inv. 1531)
Twin-barrel air pump (Inv. 1533) Air pump, 's Gravesande type (Inv. 1532) Large air pump, twin barrels (Inv. 1543) Air pump, twin barrels, table-top model (Inv. 1536)
Air pump, twin barrels, table-top model (Inv. 1537) Air pump, twin barrels table-top model (Inv. 3777) Small compression pump and receiver (Inv. 833) Small single-barrel air pump (Inv. 831)
Globes for experiments with bladders in vacuum (Inv. 358, 359) Pressure receiver or de Morveau's disinfection apparatus (Inv. 3778) Three-bladders experiment (Inv. 3776) Model of hydraulic pump (Inv. 978/a, 3775)
Castelli hydraulic pump or hydraulic fan (Inv. 1029) Vera rope pump (Inv. 980) Hero's fountain (Inv. 2153) Air-dilation fountain (Inv. 970)
Model of Archimedean screw or cochlea (Inv. 998) Archimedean screw (Inv. 999) Mixing faucet (Inv. 1014) Pyrometer or dilatometer (Inv. 573)
Model of hydraulic suction pump with slider handle system (Inv. 978b)        
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