Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.15228

    Shooting by rarefaction

    Date
    3 March 1686
    Creator
    Unknown, Artist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p1
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 139mm
    width (page): 180mm
    Subject
    Content object
    Description
    A sketch of an instrument to shoot a piece of lead (of two ounces) by exhausting air from the tube. This experiment was shown to the meeting of the Royal Society on 3 March 1686, and published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol. 16, no. 179 (1686).

    Papin had worked with Christian Huygens and Robert Boyle on their airpumps, and developed various set-ups to try further experiments using airpumps.
    Transcription
    In pencil: Fig. 5
    Transcribed by the Making Visible project
    Object history
    At the meeting of the Royal Society on 3 March 1686, ‘Dr. Papin shewed an experiment of shooting lead of two ounces by the irruption of the air into a cylinder, out of which it had been exhausted by his air-pump: which succeeded very well, the lead being cast with a considerable force. He also gave in a paper of the same’ (Birch 4:463).

    The account was registered with the legend but without the image at RBO/6/302.

    D. Papin, ‘An experiment of shooting by the rarefaction of the air’, Phil. Trans., vol. 16, no. 179 (January and February 1686), pp. 21-22.
    Related fellows
    Denis Papin (1647, French) , Natural philosopher
    Associated place
    <The World>
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          > United Kingdom
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