Speaker
Description
The history of the Istituto Tecnico begins in 1850, when the Grand Duke Leopold II of Tuscany decided to separate the Terza classe from the existing Accademia delle Belle Arti. The new school was endowed with valuable collections and a rich library which was to be enriched with new acquisitions and donations throughout the life of the Istituto. It contained publications representative of the Italian and European technical and scientific knowledge of the nineteenth century, especially in the disciplines corresponding to the subjects taught. Because of its quality, the Library soon became a reference point for the training and updating of teachers. Alongside the book holdings, a copious collection of Italian and foreign periodicals was created, a fact that testifies to the cosmopolitan culture of the Istituto and to commitment to being part of a network that was soon to become supranational in nature. In the original core of the Library, there was no lack of publications from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries that served to document the evolution of scientific thought. The collection of ancient books, strongly supported by Filippo Corridi (1806-1877), the first director of the Istituto, is now kept in the Museo della Fondazione Scienza e Tecnica, together with the Physics and Natural Sciences collections. The corpus of works on astronomy is particularly significant, including those by Aristarchus of Samos in the 1572 edition by Federico Commandino (1509-1575), Christen Sørensen Longomontanus (1562-1647), Carlo Antonio Manzini (1600-1677), Isaac Newton (1642-1726), John Keill (1671-1721), Ruđer Josip Bošković (1711-1787).
