Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.14617

    Mercury mines and brassworks in Italy

    Date
    20 September 1664
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p203a
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 143mm
    width (page): 92mm
    Subject
    Content object
    Description
    Figures of the processing of quicksilver at the mines in Friuli, Italy (fig. 1, below) and of the wind-producing contrivance at the brass works in Tivoli (fig. 2, above). From Walter Pope's letter to John Wilkins dated 20 September 1664, Venice. The letter was read at the meeting of the Royal Society on 11 January 1665 and this became the first illustration to be printed in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (vol. 1, no. 2 (April 1665)).

    There is a copy of these figures at LBC/1/235.
    Object history
    At the meeting of the Royal Society on 11 January 1665, ‘Dr. Wilkins produced a letter written to him from Dr. Pope, dated at Venice, September 2, 1664, about the mines of mercury in Friuli, viz. how the mines are ordered; how this mineral is digged, of what colour, hardness, and weight it is; how it is got out of the ore; what engines are used; and what accidents befall the labourers, &c. The same letter contained likewise a description of the contrivance of blowing the fire in the brass works of Tivoli, where the water blows the fire, not by moving the bellows, but by making wind. It was ordered, that this letter be entered in the letter-book; and that Mr. Hooke consider of the engine mentioned in it to produce air by the fall of water’ (Birch 2:6).

    Printed in Walter Pope to John Wilkins, 'Mines of Mercury in Friuli, and a way of producing Wind by the fall of water', Phil. Trans. vol. 1, no. 2 (April 1665), pp. 21-26 (reference to figs at pp. 22, 25-26). Fig. I, the mines of mercury in Friuli. Fig. II, contrivance of producing wind in the Brassworks of Tivoli near Rome.
    Related fellows
    John Wilkins (1614 - 1672, British) , Natural philosopher
    Walter Pope (1627 - 1714, British) , Astronomer
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > Italy
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