Trattato Completo d'Elettricità Teorica e Pratica con Sperimenti Originali del Signore Tiberio Cavallo

CAVALLO, Tiberius. Trattato Completo d'Elettricità Teorica e

Pratica con Sperimenti Originali del Signore Tiberio Cavallo,

Tradotto in Italiano dall'originale Inglese con addizionie e cangiamenti fatti dall' Autore. Firenze [Florence]: Per Gaetano

Cambiai Stamp. Granducale, 1779. 8vo. First Italian edition of

Cavallo's first book.

From this Italian-born English physicist, the Italian translation of a work first published in London in 1777 as A Complete Treatise of Electricity in Theory and Practice; Cavallo includes suggestions to his translator in his prefatory note, suggesting he was involved in the translation and revision of the work. (This edition also includes a new dedication from the translator to the English

Florentine expatriate, George Clavering-Cowper, dated 26 March 1779.)

Includes mention of Franklin (and his lightning rods), accounts of experiments conducted by Cavallo with Leiden jars and other apparatuses, and experiments with medical treatment with electricity. With a folding table of experimental data bound after page 468, and three folding engravings of various pieces of electrical equipment bound in the rear. "atmospheric electricity, which he explored with Franklin kites and with improved detectors of his own invention. They required a course of self-instruction that culminated in Cavallo's most important work, A Complete

Treatise on Electricity. An excellent compendium, the Treatise served the needs of both the neophyte and the initiate, who found in its appendixes valuable details about medical electricity; about

Beccaria's obscure theories; and about Cavallo's forte, the design and operation of electrostatic instruments" (DSB). His inventions were notable for the "ingenuity [that] was shown in their construction, all his instruments for the measurement of the quantity and force of electricity being remarkable for their extreme delicacy and correctness" (DNB)

From Catalog IV

Cavallo's treatise, the standard textbook of electricity in the last quarter of the century, in its Italian edition. Cavallo was a Neapolitan working in London and a Fellow of the Royal Society; his book is Franklin's system taught as settled science, with the experiments a student was expected to repeat.