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Description
In this paper we bring light on some aspects of the Corrado Bonfanti’s book collection held at “I.T.S. Alessandro Volta” in Trieste. The attention will focus on four books, two about quantum mechanics, one about relativity and one about television all dating from the first three decades of the twentieth century.
The two books on quantum mechanics (written by Antonio Carrelli and Enrico Persico in 1932 and 1936, respectively) show the great advances made in understanding the structure of the atomic nucleus following the discovery of the neutron by James Chadwich in 1932.
The book about general relativity is a second Italian edition (from 1922) of a translation of the 1920 text “Das Weltbild der Relativitätstheorie. Allgemeinverständliche Einführung in die Einsteinsche Lehre von Raum und Zeit”. The book provides a fairly complete introduction to the subject and remains accessible to a wide audience, is one of the first informative works on relativity.
The last book is “Televisione, le basi fisiche del radiovedere” by Gaetano Castelfranchi, published by Hoepli in Milan in 1931. This book offers an introduction to the history and the development of the scientific discoveries that made possible the creation of the first apparatus for the transmission of moving images by means of electromagnetic waves.
The main interest in the study of these books lies in the fact that they provide a deep insight into the history of physics and its teaching since they were written at a time when the fields they cover were not yet fully developed.
