Camera Aeolia
Date
6 July 1687
Creator
Unknown, Artist
Object type
Archive reference number
Manuscript page number
p1
Material
Dimensions
height (page): 300mm
width (page): 192mm
width (page): 192mm
Subject
Description
Drawing of a trompe called 'Camera Aeolia' by Athanasius Kircher. The camera aeolia was a covered chamber in which compressed air was created by water rushing down vertically. The mechanism was used to power a musical instrument in Kircher's Musurgia universalis (1650). Denis Papin produced this design to explain its mechanism at the meeting of the Royal Society on 6 July 1687.
Transcription
p. 3:The descriptions given by Kirker, Scottus, and severall others of the Camera Aeolia, as they call it, being all faulty: so that they would be fit not only to make People spend their money for engines that would not succeed, but also to lead us into mistakes about the proprieties of Natural Body's, by giving occasion to think that Water may produce out of itself huge quantities of Air. I hope it will not be unacceptable if I give the right Description of the sayd engine, as I have observed it in Savoy and in Italy: I have therefore drawn the present scheme.
AA is a Vessell well close everywhere but in the places where the following pieces are inserted.
BB a Pipe about ten foot long or something more fastened in a hole in the cover of the Vessell AA, whereby the water runs down into the say'd Vessell.
CC another pipe at the bottom of the same Vessell whereby a perpetual and strong wind is convey'd to the forge or anywhere else you please.
EE. a channell that brings a constant supply of water to the Pipe BB that it may be always full.
Transcribed by the Making Visible project
AA is a Vessell well close everywhere but in the places where the following pieces are inserted.
BB a Pipe about ten foot long or something more fastened in a hole in the cover of the Vessell AA, whereby the water runs down into the say'd Vessell.
CC another pipe at the bottom of the same Vessell whereby a perpetual and strong wind is convey'd to the forge or anywhere else you please.
EE. a channell that brings a constant supply of water to the Pipe BB that it may be always full.
Transcribed by the Making Visible project
Object history
At the meeting of the Royal Society on 6 July 1687, ‘A paper of Dr. Papin was read about the reason of the camera Æolica, or engine for producing a wind by the running water, which had been supposed to proceed from a generation of air by the agitation of the water upon a great fall. This Dr. Papin had found by experience to be untrue; and he proposed in this paper, that, according to the make of the engine, the air entering into the pipe, whereby the water descends, is carried down with it, and then by its levity makes its way out at the top of the vessel, while the water runs out at the bottom’ (Birch 4:545).
Related fellows
Denis Papin (1647, French) , Natural philosopher
Associated place