Tra teoria ed esperimenti: la deviazione dei gravi e la rotazione della Terra (1789-1805)

Borgato, Maria Teresa

Bollettino della Unione matematica italiana, Série 8, 10A (2007) no. 3, pp. 497-536

Résumé

he theory of the deviation of falling bodies was developed at the end of the eighteenth century, in connection with the search for an experimental test for the Earth's rotation. In the period between 1789 and 1805, Italy was witness to many experiments, as well as heated scientific debates, on the part of mathematicians and astronomers from various cities around the country. Giambattista Guglielmini de- signed an experiment based on the measurement of the East deviation, in relation to the plumb line, of a falling body. Guglielmini originally planned the experiment to take place in St. Peter's in Rome, to conciliate the Roman Church with the Copernican system; instead, he carried it out in the Asinelli Tower in Bologna in 1791, and it was then taken up by other scientists in Rome, Turin, Novara, Bergamo, Hamburg and Schlebush. News of the experiment spread to France and Germany, and the theory of deviation, after some previous attempts, was clarified in the works of Laplace and Gauss.