Evolution of Teaching in the School System. Mechanics Applied to Machines.

Abstract

We do not think it possible to reconstruct the development of the teaching of Applied Mechanics to the Machines in Naples on the basis of the texts that the various teachers, of which we have news, it have wrote or used for the conduct of their lessons, lacking, among other things, indications certain for all the period to which we have turned our interest. At the same time we consider important the knowledge of the bases on which it they came forming not only the students, but also the teachers who taught in what is currently the Faculty of Engineering Federico II of Naples, Italy. We also consider it important, for any future studies, to make known the amount of books available in the Faculty and in the departments connected to it. For these reasons we have collected in the first chapter the various texts of which we have come to know, reporting in full the indexes of the topics, obviously useful to know the problems considered interesting for the study and at the same time understand their evolution. From the preface of the text 'General Theory of Machines' by F. Reuleaux, director of the Berlin school, year 1874, first chapter, page 67: the following considerations are intended to discuss the various aspects under which machines are generally presented in order to determine, among many, the real point of view from which one must study. We therefore understand them: Basic principles of a general theory of machines. …. Here it is not just a matter of giving a new form to principles already known and discussed, nor of substituting new subdivisions and new nomenclatures to the ancient ones. Perhaps with such modifications it will be possible to treat the matter with greater ease or elegance; but for practical use one can still use the known methods for a long time. …for, to open with a phrase by Goethe, one does not possess anything but what one understands ... An arduous task is certainly to establish in what period and course the lessons of Applied Mechanics to Machines emerge. Intuitively we have to think in some course of Mechanics, then roughly in the period in which courses on Machine Mechanics are introduced; for something more exhaustive you must immerse yourself in historical archives, browse fascinating books that date back to the second half of the eighteenth century, like the text by Frisi Paolo, institutions of mechanics, hydrostatics of hydrometry and static architecture, and hydraulics to use in the royal school erected in Milan for architects, and for the engineers , fabulous handwritten texts. To give the best solution to our problem, that is to say, to try to understand, what were the topics studied that, at least in part, concerned the Mechanics Applied to Machines, before its official insertion, we considered it appropriate to face the problem with a historical approach. Not having specific documents, which could lead directly to the solution of the problem, we have circumvented the obstacle by trying to follow, according to a temporal and logical progression, the events that have marked the history of the Mechanics Applied to Machines . In the first part of the publication we had an interest in the historical study of documents, turning more attention to the birth and evolution of the topics of Applied Mechanics to Machines in the second part.