Abstract
AbstractAn interesting, yet unknown episode concerning the effective permeation of the scientific revolution in eighteenth-century Kingdom of Naples (and Italy more generally) is recounted. The intriguing story of James Watt’s steam engine, prepared to serve a Royal Estate of the King of Naples in Carditello, reveals a fascinating piece of the history of that kingdom, as well as an unknown step in the history of Watt’s steam engine, whose final entrepreneurial success for the celebrated Boulton & Watt company was a direct consequence. This story reveals that, contrary to what claimed in the literature, the first introduction in Italy of the most important technological innovation of the eighteenth century did not take place with the construction of the first steamship of the Mediterranean Sea, but rather thirty years before that, thanks to the incomparable work of Giuseppe Saverio Poli, a leading scholar and an influential figure in the Kingdom of Naples. The tragic epilogue of Poli’s engine accounts for its vanishing from historical memory.
Funder
Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Subject
General Physics and Astronomy,History
Reference83 articles.
1. Lissa L. Roberts, "Full Steam Ahead: Entrepreneurial Engineers as Go-Betweens during the Late Eighteenth Century," in The Brokered World: Go-Betweens and Global Intelligence, 1770-1820, ed. Simon Schaffer, Lisa L. Roberts, Kapil Raj, and James Delbourgo, 193-238 (Camden, NJ: Science History Publications, 2009)
2. "Geographies of Steam: Mapping the Entrepreneurial Activities of Steam Engineers in France during the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century," History and Technology 27, no. 4 (2011), 417-39.
3. Lissa L. Roberts, “Water, Steam and Change: The Roles of Land Drainage, Water Supplies and Garden Fountains in the Early Development of the Steam Engine,” Endeavour 24, no. 2 (2000), 55–58.
4. Roberts, “Geographies of Steam” (ref. 1).
5. Roberts, “Full Steam Ahead” (ref. 1).
Cited by
2 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献，注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献，订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献