The Volta Room

Volta’s laboratory table

The room was inaugurated during the celebrations for the bicentenary of the invention of the Pile battery (1999). It houses a large collection of instruments belonging to the original Physics Cabinet of Alessandro Volta – who taught experimental physics in Pavia starting 1778.

On one side of the room, two work tables – originally owned by Volta himself – display some of the numerous instruments used by the scientist to investigate electric charges, their properties and the properties of electrically charged bodies. Namely, electrophoruses, gold-leaf electroscopes and condensing electroscopes, electrometers, surge suppressors, Franklin’s squares and conductors in various shapes.

Here the visitor may observe reproductions of Volta’s pile battery (the originals were unfortunately destroyed in a fire, occurred during an exhibition in Como in 1899), several Leyden Jars (either single or in series), an electrostatic machine (the Nairne model), eudiometers, a few models of Volta’s pistol and an apparatus for the study of the extension of gasses (as Volta also determined the law of isobaric extension, ten years before Gay-Lussac).

At the centre of the room, two showcases hold mechanical and pneumatic instruments – all belonging to one of Pavia’s oldest highschools, Liceo Ugo Foscolo. The instruments include: apparatuses for the study of movement on inclined surfaces and for the study of elastic collisions, puleggia –  bullwheels, pumps, intermittent fountains and an apparatus to evaluate air resistance. These beautiful instruments were either acquired by Volta or built on his specifications; they were subsequently moved from his Cabinet when, in the XIX century, a reform of education delegated the teaching of Mechanics to highschools.

Rounding up the collection, a few cabinets house instruments pertaining to Electrology (Leyden and Lane jars, magnets, dry pile batteries…), Mechanics and Thermology (an idrostatic precision scale, Laplace and Lavoisier calorimeters, thermometers and barometers, a Newton tube), Optics (mirrors, lenses, prisms, microscopes and telescopes) and two unit standards for the meter and the kilogram.