Giovanni Poleni and the Circulation of Early Electrical Knowledge: at the Origins of Italian Elettricismo

by Dr Lorenzo Voltolina (DFA)

Thursday 5 Jun 2025, 17:35 → 17:50 Europe/Rome

1/1-3 - Aula B (Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia - Edificio Marzolo)

In the mid-18th century, the “fashion of electricity” spread widely throughout Italy. A crucial role was played by the so-called “Saxons,” itinerant foreign demonstrators who likely introduced the first rotational electrical machines into the Cisalpine territories. However, the contribution of Italian researchers to the dissemination of electrical knowledge, both theoretical and experimental, and the originality of their investigations remain underexplored topics in the scholarly literature. This research examines the figure of Giovanni Poleni, professor of the first course in Experimental Philosophy at the University of Padua, and his early engagement with electricity between 1742 and 1748. By analyzing his correspondence with academics, instrument makers, and itinerant demonstrators, and his unpublished compendium Physices Elementa Mathematica Experimentis Confirmata, this contribution reconstructs the complex network of intellectual exchanges that shaped scientific inquiry in Enlightenment Italy, also offering new evidence concerning the authorship of the first Italian treatise entirely devoted to electricity, Dell’Elettricismo (1747