BARSANTI, EUGENIO. - Scolopian physicist and mathematician, b. at Pietrasanta on 12 Oct. 1821, d. at Seraing (Belgium) on 18 Apr. 1864. He taught physics and mathematics at Volterra from the year 1843. While repeating before his pupils the experiment of Volta's pistol, he thought that the force developed by the explosion of the mixture of hydrogen gas and air could be applied as a motive force in a mechanism resembling steam engines. In 1849 he was called to Florence to teach mathematics and shortly afterward was appointed lecturer in mechanics and hydraulics at the Ximenian Observatory. B., having come to Florence, did not take long to set out the ideas he had conceived at Volterra to Fr. Antonelli, who had now become his colleague in teaching, and it was the latter who invited Felice Matteucci, a profound connoisseur of mechanics, to collaborate with B. in building the first gas engine. The two scholars undertook together, toward the end of 1851, a long and meticulous series of experiments, and since the preparatory studies were by then well advanced, they thought it appropriate to write a Memoir and deliver it sealed to a scientific academy in order to claim priority for their discovery should others have studied the same subject. The academy chosen was that of the Georgofili of Florence, to which they delivered the Memoir in June 1853. At the request of the two partners, the sealed packet was opened ten years later, and precisely on 20 Sept. 1863, and the Memoir was read and then printed in the proceedings of that same academy. The name of B. is therefore linked to the invention of the Barsanti-Matteucci internal combustion engine, which has hitherto circulated in industry under the usurped name of Otto-Langen. In a lecture given at Florence in 1931, Fr. Guido Alfani claimed the invention for B.
Bibliography
Leodegario Picanyol