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BOYLE (ROBERT) New Experiments Physico-Mechanical, Touching the Spring of the Air, and its Effects... in a New Pnuematical [sic] Engine, 3 parts in 1 vol., Miles Flescher for Richard Davis, 1682
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BOYLE (ROBERT)
Footnotes
"Boyle's New Experiments Physico-Mechanical... recounted experiments using a vacuum chamber or 'air pump' which he constructed with the assistance of Hooke. Rejecting the scholastic notion that nature could not tolerate a vacuum, he showed how it was perfectly possible to produce one, and this enabled him to illustrate the characteristics and functions of the air by studying the effects of its withdrawal on flame, light, and living creatures. He also argued that certain characteristics of the air could only be explained in terms of the ingenious hypothesis that it had a certain weight and 'spring'" (ODNB).
Provenance: Thomas Harrison of Queen's College, Cambridge (probably the Secretary of the Royal Institution who was an anti-slavery campaigner, 1771-1824), bookplate.




