The birth of the Application School of Bridges and Roads (1806 - 1815), Naples, Italy. Universities and scientific disciplines in Italy and Europe.

Universities and scientific disciplines in Italy and Europe.

The birth of the Application School of Bridges and Roads (1806 - 1815), Naples, Italy.

Universities and scientific disciplines in the rest of Italy. In 1725, in Turin, the king Vittorio Amedeo II (1°) had promulgated the statutes of the University that established some criteria of theoretical training for engineers civilians. The latters had to take an approval test with one of the University's mathematics professors. In 1739, the Military Academy was set up in Turin, dedicated to the study of fortifications and artillery. In 1772, of the successive Constitutions, established the courses of Mathematics and Construction which were to be followed by the royal engineers; these courses were divided into five years, in the first of which the algebraic analysis had to be taught, in the second the conic sections, in the third the analysis of the infinitesimal, in the fourth the theory of the motion of the solids, in the fifth that of the motion of the liquids . Schools for Architects and Engineers then established in Milan, in 1795, in execution of Maria Teresa's 1761 edict, with which one of the most complete disciplines for the engineering profession was dictated; no trace of this school has remained.

In Modena, in 1757, an "Academy of Military Architecture was established for convenience and erudition not only of Engineers and Artillery, but of any official and any other person". It is the foundation, under the period of Napoleonic occupation, of the school of genius and artillery, to bring to Italy the model of the Ecole Polytechnique. The Modena school is the only one of completely free higher education of the Cisalpine Republic, and then of the Kingdom. 28 candidates are admitted to the course. At the end of the three-year period, the qualifications for the professions as an engineer or artilleryman are obtained. But the 1° June 1814, with the advance of the Austrian troops, the School is closed. The higher technical teaching, aimed at the training of engineers, especially civilians, is given in the faculties of physical and mathematical sciences, but it has strong gaps. The only two special schools existing in Italy at the turn of the nineteenth century, the School of Bridges and Roads founded in Naples in 1811 and the School for Engineers built in Rome in 1817, are structures without organization and strongly lacking scientific and educational equipment . The Corps of Pioneers, and in particular the Institute of Pioneering Mathematical Cadets, founded between 1823 and 1824, are an exception. This institute raises an interest in technical education in the territories of Modena and Reggio. The course, unique in Italy, has the structure of a true university course. Its duration is five years, and it is taught, after a preparatory year, the algebraic and analytical calculation, the theoretical and experimental architecture, the descriptive geometry, the mechanics, the hydraulics. After the revolts of 1848 all university boarding schools will be suppressed (V. Marchis, Storia delle Macchine, p.178; Editori Laterza 1994).

NOTE (1°): Vittorio Amedeo II made a not indifferent effort to give a solid financial basis to the new University and this policy was substantially maintained during the century. ..... Wages were regularly paid: And the professors, who enjoyed perpetual conduct, could devote themselves to studies without excessive worries for the future, especially since after fourteen years of teaching, ..... in case of withdrawal , they had the title of jubilant professor, with half salary. (Marina Roggero, History of Italy, Annali 4, Einaudi 1981, p.1072).

Universities and scientific disciplines in Europe. Also in the rest of Europe we are witnessing the birth of schools for military preparation: in France in 1720 the first school for engineers was created, created as a military school; in England, in 1741, the Royal Military Academy was established, for the preparation of artillery officers and Engineers. In the second half of the eighteenth century, in England, and more precisely in Manchester, doctors, physicists and "natural philosophers" disseminated the most recent scientific discoveries. In particular, John Banks is one of the most assiduous lecturers in the north-western regions. His works are the synthesis of more than 20 years of lessons given to a vast audience under the auspices of the College of Art and Sciences. ..... These lessons anticipate in many ways the work of the Mechanics' Institutes. Henry Clarke, after traveling all over Europe, founded the Commercial and Mathematical School in Salford in 1765. In 1772 he established numerous evening courses and grants young people a "preparation on the scientific aspects of mechanical professions and on the most interesting aspects of theoretical and experimental science, correlating them with experiments with modern equipment". Itinerant readers come from different cultural backgrounds: some are self-taught, other graduates in Scottish universities, others craftsmen and watchmakers ...... From 1784 to 1792 Isaac Milner, first holder of the Jacksonian Chair, set up at Queen's College a mechanics laboratory with lathes, grinding wheels, bellows, ovens, electrostatic benches, and there begins a vast experimentation activity ..... The course held by William Farish in Cambridge is the first serious attempt - as Hilken called it -, in all English universities, to study the industrial applications of technology, and is the first to teach the discipline of "construction of machines" as an autonomous subject (V. Marchis, History of Machines, p.176-177; Editori Laterza 1994). Continuing to examine what was happening in Europe in the period between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, it is possible to observe that, around 1690, Duke Francesco d'Este had founded the Academy of Military Architecture in modena; in 1745 Duke Charles I founded the Brunswick Collegium Carolinum with a school of mines. By virtue of an ordinance (1744) of Louis XV establishing a design office for the detection of a map of the streets of France, under the direction of engineer Jean-Rodolphe Perronet (1708-1794), in 1747 the famous was born & Eacutr; cole des Ponts et Chaussèes, with the task of preparing the technicians of the Corps of Bridges and Roads, a school that only after 1791 had the character of a higher institute. Also in France, in 1748, the Ecole des Ingenieurs de Mezieres (2& deg;) was founded, with the task of preparing the officers of military engineering and again in 1794-1795 the Ecole Polytecnique, (Engineering Polytechnic). The new cultural instances introduced by the French revolution lead to the creation in France of the Ecole de navigation and the cannonage maritimes, the Ecole des armes, the Ecole de travaux publics (1794), the Conservatoir des Arts et Metiers (1794 ). The Polytechnic of Prague (1806) and the Vienna University (1815) follow in Europe (V. Marchis, History of Machines, p.176-177; Editori Laterza 1994).

NOTE (2°): Ecole des Ingenieurs de Mèzières (1748-1794). The duration of the studies was two years and one exam sanctioned each of them. The diploma of engineer was subordinated to the results of the successive stages that the candidate carried out in the various weapons. Monge was among the famous professors of this school.

THE BIRTH OF THE SCHOOL OF APPLICATION OF BRIDGES AND ROADS (1806 - 1815), Naples. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the situation of university scientific culture could not be said brilliant: The seven hundred had been a glorious season for Neapolitan culture, and partly also for mathematics: Niccolò de Martino and his brother Pietro had published the first manuals of the new physics, of algebra and Cartesian geometry. After them other figures, notable in the Italian sphere, had continued their work as treatise writers (Giuseppe Orlando, Vito Caravelli etc.). The dramatic end of the Neapolitan Republic of 1799, to which many scientists had joined, put an end to this favorable period: those who were not killed by the Bourbon reaction, such as Nicola Fiorentino and Vincenzo De Filippis, found a way out abroad (Vincenzo Porto). A new emigration occurred after the bracket murattiana. Carlo Lauberg and Annibale Giordano lived in exiles in France, modifying their surnames (Laubert, Jordan), Ottavio Colecchi found a place in Lithuania. In Naples remained the old Nicola Fergola and his modest pupil Flauti, engaged in marginal fields of synthetic geometry. In the first half of the nineteenth century the Neapolitan mathematical life ended up being linked essentially to the school for engineers, founded by Murat, and to the astronomical Observatory.

Civil educational institutions A real school, whose order can be considered the inspiration of that of the modern engineering faculties, was built in Naples during the decade of occupation of the Kingdom of Naples by the French, in period 1806 -1815. The French seem to have particular skills in engineering and this is confirmed by taking a look at the public works they have made in the Kingdom of Naples, under Giuseppe Bonaparte and Gioacchino Napoleone Murat. On November 18, 1808, from the Murat (3°) was established in Portici the establishment of a Royal Corps of Bridges and Roads, whose direction with the same act, he was entrusted to the general of division, Jacques David Martin de Campredon. Subsequently, with a decree dated March 4, 1811, a Application Schoolwas set up for the training of engineers assigned to the Corps. On January 26, 1809, the Murat commissioned a commission to present a draft law on public education . The secretary of the commission was Mr. Tito Manzi, the other members were the Archbishop of Taranto, Giuseppe Capecelatro, the Bishop of Lettere and Gragnano, Bernardo della Torre, Melchiorre Delfico and Vincenzo Cuoco. This is how that Report and draft law was created for the reform of public education, mainly due to Vincenzo Cuoco, a member of the aforementioned commission. In the vision of the Cook (4°), as appears from the Report, on the ordering of what are now called Engineering studies, the University education, which he calls sublime, is considered a third degree, compared to primary education and to middle education. The sciences are considered as operative: they are divided into many operating classes, how many are the uses of civil life to which they are assigned. The sciences are called professions. Of these, some, or of less general use such as the Veterinary and Mineralogy, or special services of the State, such as the Artillery, the Navy etc. they form the subject of education in the special schools. The others should be united in one body, forming the Universities. In the design of the Cuoco (Vincenzo Cuoco), therefore, as far as the mathematical and physical sciences are concerned, most of them are taught at the University, in the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, and in particular that they should be taught:Mathematics Synthetic - Analytical Mathematics - Calculus of the Infinites - Heuristic or Mechanical Invention - Mechanics - Experimental Physics - Geology - Botany and Plant Physiology - Mineralogy - Chemistry. At the same Faculty the Observatory had to belong, with a professor of astronomy and two added one of them in charge of a course in optics. A cabinet of machines had to be joined to the chair of Experimental Physics, and the professor had to be assigned an adjunct; also the two chairs of Mineralogy and Chemistry had to have a mineralogical cabinet and a laboratory. The professor of chemistry had to have an adjunct, in charge of the Pharmacy courses. The teaching of some of these sciences, and of most of their applications, comes from the Cuoco reserved for the special schools, to which we must also add the School joined to the Museum of Mechanical Arts, at the R. Institute of Encouragement. So for particular Mechanics such as Hydrodynamics, Hydrostatics, Hydraulics, as well as for Metallurgy. The practical mechanics, corresponding to the ancient general experimental physics, is instead assigned to that type of medium institute called School of Arts. The project considers special schools those: Veterinary, Navigation, Mineralogy (Metallurgy), Deaf-mutes, Polytechnic, Bridges and roads, Application for Artillery and Genius, dictating rules for the first three and declaring that the others would be due to be regulated by particular regulations. According to the project, the teaching of Civil Architecture takes place in the existing School of Arts and Design. At the Institute of Encouragement and Mechanical Arts, the project assigns the task of taking particular care of the progress of the industries and the economy of the Kingdom, establishing that a museum is to be added to the Institute to collect the models of all the machines, with the names of the inventors; this Museum should have been joined by the public schools of practical mathematics, of Chemistry applied to the Arts, of practical and descriptive Geometry, of Design or of ornate with respect to the Arts, of Stereotomy and Construction, of Agriculture. After more than half a century we will find this scheme realized in the Royal Industrial Museum of Turin, to whose conception, for the many correspondences, the conception of the cook was certainly not extraneous. Finally, the project proposes an organic system of rules for the awarding of academic degrees, approval, license, and degree, and for their use for professional purposes. To compare the rules of the Murat decree, dated November 29th, 1811, containing the discipline of the public education system, with the corresponding ones of the Progetto del Cuoco, it is not difficult to find that the original scheme, although undergoing remarkable cuts, is still faithfully followed in several of its provisions. As for the rules that regulate, in the Muratt decree, the faculty of mathematical and physical Sciences, we find that the subjects of teaching are the same as in the Cuoco project, with the elimination of the Calculus of the infinite and Heuristic art or mechanical invention . Even the rules relating to the laboratories and the Cabinet of machines remain alive. As in the Project, also in the Law, there are three academic degrees: the approval, the license and the degree, while referring to specific regulations the task of fixing the requirements and the way of conferring degrees and that of regulating professions for whose exercise was required. Returning to the Murat decree of 1811, we recall that in it was deliberated the of a establishment the School of Application in the Corps of Engineers and Bridges, to instruct 12 students chosen by examination, of which you are, after having attended the courses and after being chosen, they had to go to cover the corresponding squares of aspirants, near the Corps: squares that were established with the same decree. The students of the School were assigned an annual treatment of ducats 120 ducats, to the aspirants, that of ducats 240, plus 180 ducats for their campaign. With the transmission of the decree concerning the institution of the School and the regulation of its activity, made March 23, 1811, by the Minister of the Interior to General Campredon, Councilor of State and Director General of Bridges and Roads, the School of application of Bridges and Strade began his life. On May 1, 1811, the competition for the admission of the first twelve students was announced. While the candidates' requests are received, a body of examiners and the choice of teachers are trained. The first designations are those of the abbot Giuseppe Conti (5°), for the chair of Experimental Physics, of Chemistry and Mineralogy and of prof. Leopoldo Laperuta for the chair of Civil Architecture and the Design Arts related to buildings in general. Among the exam subjects, particular importance was assigned to mathematics; the assignment was entrusted with prof. Felice Giannattasio (6°), then at the Military School. The principle to which the studies had to conform was to bring the student to the direct discovery of the cognitive fact, recependolo by means of manual and material execution of this or that object, of this or that experiment, a principle that constitutes a completely new orientation in this kind of studies. This principle is then integrated and completed by the other, which tends to the progressive practical application of the scientific concepts learned, so as to lead to the formation of a direct and increasingly broader experience of the student and then to the gradual formation of its true capacity. technique. For example, in the course of Meccanica, dedicated to the study of the Francoeur (7°) treaty, as regards the General Mechanics, as well as those of Belidoro for Architecture , hydraulics, of Fabre for the mills, of the Polytechnic School of Paris for the machines, of the Dubuat for the hydraulic Principles as well as of the Frisi, Bossut, Ximenes, Mari etc., for the Hydraulic Applications, the teaching activity is based, in so much its part, on the Application of Machines and on the Application of Hydraulics. The General Direction of the Royal Corps of Bridges and Roads was installed in the Palace belonging to the Ruffo dei Duchi di Bagnara family, which Carlo Fontana had built around 1660, and which overlooked the Largo del Mercatello (now Piazza Dante), adjacent to the convent joined to the Church of S. Maria di Caravaggio. And it was the convent of Caravaggio, where the Piarist Fathers had their own institute of education, which was chosen as the seat of the School. In order to use it, the works of arrangement were then put into place, although it was evident from the very beginning that the premises were not suitable for the needs. The life of the Application School, from February 1812 to November 1814, is dominated by the personality of the General Manager Pietro Colletta (8°). Pietro Colletta first reorganizes the teachings, giving instructions on teaching methods by the teachers and indicating the programs, which, roughly, refer to the already formulated schemes, but with greater precision, especially for teaching applications. On the basis of the fixed instructions and under the guidance of the teachers themselves, courses are held 1812-1813 and 1813-1814, with which the last three-year period ends. Meanwhile, the war events are increasingly recalling Colletta, which, since 27 June 1813, has been named Field Marshal, and to whom the Command of the active Army Genius has been entrusted. From the following February 1815, the General Director of Ponti e Strade was Field Marshal Francesco Costanzo. Baron Costanzo remains to lead the Corps in the years 1815 and 1816 overcoming the difficult moment of the return of the ruling dynasty. From the administrative records it is revealed that at least for 1815 a certain activity of the school remains alive, to which funds are credited.

NOTE (3°): The period called "French Decade" began with the occupation of Naples by Giuseppe Bonaparte on February 14th, 1806 (.. first French ranks occupy the city ... - Pietro Colletta - History of the Kingdom of Naples, Vol.2°, p.216 - Libreria Scientifica Editrice, Naples), appointed king the following March and remained in office until 15 July 1808, when he became king of Spain. In its place was called Gioacchino Murat who remained in government until March 1815.

NOTE (4°): Vincenzo Cuoco born in 1770 in Civitacampomarano (CB). A philosopher and politician, after the failed Neapolitan revolution of 1799, he fled to Milan where he founded the "Giornale italiano" and became an official of the Cisalpine republic. In 1801 he wrote the first edition of the famous Essay on the Neapolitan Revolution of 1799 (in which he criticized the abstractness and schematism of the Jacobins, and argued that theirs was a "passive revolution" brought to Naples by a conquering army and founded on order totally unrelated to the mentality of the southern masses) influenced by the thought of GB Vico and the lighting ideas. In 1806 the second edition of the same essay was published, modified and more moderate than the first edition. In 1806, after returning to Naples, he held important positions in the government of Gioacchino Murat. He died in Naples in 1823.

NOTE (5°): The abbot Giuseppe Conti born in Pellegrino Parmense on 17 January 1779, in 1801 he had obtained teaching as a repeater on the chair of Physics and Mathematics at the Lalatta College of Parma. He expatiated to Naples; after two years dedicated to private teaching, he was appointed professor of Experimental Physics, Chemistry and Mineralogy in the Application School of the General Management of Bridges and Roads. On 17 August 1809 he was appointed member of the Royal Institute of Encouragement at the Natural Sciences of Naples, one of the most important institutions in the period between 1806 and 1819. His inventive and innovative capacity in technology became prominent between 1815 and 1845. Professor of practical mechanics, he solved the practical problem of the water supply of the machines of the great silk spinning mill in San Leucio (Caserta); until then the problem was considered insoluble because of the distance and the difference in height between the manufacturing and the waters of the river that had to feed the factory. In 1832 he also built the first Italian low-pressure steam engine. A detailed description of these works carried out in his laboratory is reported in the Gazzetta di Parma, 1827, p. 37. He wrote a method to double the hydraulic forces for the benefit of agriculture and factories. In 1837, a device for harvesting cereals and a new-shaped mill. In 1845 he devised a new method to advantageously use the driving force of water falls, applicable to low-speed currents; he perfected an elastic plunger metal pump for construction, industrial, and field irrigation, with powers from one to four horses, which earned him a gold medal from the King. The date of his death is not certain. Some sources say that in the last years of his existence he was retired by the king of Naples and died in the same city on May 9, 1855. (Summary of news reported on the Internet, under the heading "Joseph Physics Experimental Physics").

NOTE (6°): Felice Giannattasio (1759-1849) Priest, philosopher and mathematician. He occupied a leading position in the Enlightenment Naples where he attended the Ignarra, and Conforti, like him Jansenist for the ideals of reform of the state. He was a pupil of Luca Giordano with whom he investigated various problems of geometry, then replacing it in his school. He was able to operate, both at the University and in a private school that gave him greater freedom, where he brought the experience of his travels throughout Italy and his friendship with the French naturalist Daniel Daubenton, and where, together with Fergola, started to a broad action to spread the knowledge of Newton with the explanation of the fundamental work of classical physics Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica both in the methodology and in the description of the great machine of the world. Related to the insights he conducted on Newton, his study on the conic sections was born, which "investigates the cause of the wondrous phenomenon of the curves of nature, the orbits of comets and the elliptic trajectories", and which was written "a pro 'de' youths ". He occupied the chair of mathematics at the Military College of Naples and that of Astronomy and of sublime Synthesis.

NOTE (7°): Louis Benjamin Francoeur (Paris 1773 - Paris 1849). In 1804 he was a professor of mathematics at the Ecole Polytechnique; since 1808, professor of mathematics at the Facultè des Sciences, until 1845. Famous as a writer of texts on mechanics and mathematics.

NOTE (8°): Pietro Colletta (Naples 1775 - Florence 1831) - Officer of the genius in the Bourbon army, in 1799 he did not hide his sympathies for the Partenopean Republic, and at the return of the Bourbons it was therefore dispensed from service. Then he followed a rapid military career under the reign of Gioacchino Murat, reaching the rank of lieutenant general. For his exceptional qualities he was not removed from the rank even after the Restoration, but he was kept on the sidelines, until in 1820, the Carbonara revolution broke out, he was given the task of subduing Sicily, a task that he carried out with great firmness. But the following year, to escape the persecutions of the Bourbon reaction, he self-exiled and from 1823 he settled in Florence. In Naples, during the years of the Restoration, he wrote a military 'Memoria' on the Italian campaign of 1815, which did not see the light, and in Tuscany he wanted to devote himself to historical and literary studies, giving life to the History of the Kingdom of Naples from 1734 to 1825, cured, especially for the form, by friends Giordani, Niccolini, Lambruschini and Leopardi, and was published posthumously in 1834. In his works there is a certain personal resentment towards some members of Neapolitan politics, and distinctive features of love for his land that Mazzini called regional selfishness rather than Italian patriotism.

Sources for research: Bibliografia publication 2018-18,02 - Magazine H Research Edition numero 2018-19.

Publication rapporteur and Research Coordinator: Prof. Lelio Della Pietra (Mechanics Applied to Machines, Federico II, Engineering, Naples).