BARSANTI, EUGENIO. – Physicist and mathematician of the Piarist Order, born in Pietrasanta on 12 Oct. 1821, died at Seraing (Belgium) on 18 Apr. 1864. He taught physics and mathematics at Volterra from 1843 onwards. While repeating before his pupils Volta’s pistol experiment, he conceived the idea that the force produced by the explosion of a mixture of hydrogen gas and air might be harnessed as a motive power in a mechanism resembling a steam engine. In 1849 he was called to Florence to teach mathematics, and shortly afterwards was appointed lecturer in mechanics and hydraulics at the Ximenian Observatory.
Once in Florence, Barsanti soon disclosed to Fr. Antonelli—who had become his colleague in teaching—the ideas he had formed at Volterra; and it was Antonelli who invited Felice Matteucci, an expert in mechanics, to collaborate with Barsanti in constructing the first gas engine. The two scholars began, towards the end of 1851, a long and painstaking series of experiments. When their preparatory studies had reached an advanced stage, they decided it advisable to write a memoir and deposit it under seal with a scientific academy in order to safeguard their priority of discovery should others be working on the same subject. The academy chosen was that of the Georgofili in Florence, to which they consigned their memoir in June 1853. At the request of the two associates, the sealed packet was opened and the memoir read and then printed in the academy’s proceedings on 20 Sept. 1863.
Barsanti’s name is therefore linked with the invention of the Barsanti-Matteucci internal combustion engine, which has hitherto been known in industry under the misappropriated name of Otto-Langen. In a lecture delivered in Florence in 1931, Fr. Guido Alfani vindicated Barsanti’s claim to the invention.