Accademia del Cimento

The Accademia del Cimento (Academy of Experiment), an early scientific society, was founded in Florence in 1657 by students of Galileo, Giovanni Alfonso Borelli and Vincenzo Viviani and ceased to exist about a decade later. The foundation of Academy was funded by Prince Leopoldo and Grand Duke Ferdinando II de' Medici. The of the society included:

The Cimento published a manual of experimentation which began the process of standardizing processes, instruments and measurements throughout Europe. Their motto Provando e riprovando can be translated either as "trying and trying again" or as "experimenting and confirming". Unlike many of the other scientific societies formed in the seventeenth century, such as the Accademia dei Lincei (founded 1603), the Royal Society of London (founded 1660), and the Academie Royale des Sciences (founded 1666), the Accademia del Cimento never established rules to make it a formal body. There were no formal rules for joining the society, there was no established meeting calendar and the society never set up an organizational structure. Instead the society remained a close knit group of virtuosi under the direction of their patrons, Prince Leopold of Tuscany and Ferdinando II de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, both sons of Cosimo II de’ Medici. The society only published one manuscript during its existence, Saggi di naturali esperienze fatte nell'Academia del Cimento sotto la protezione del Serenissimo Principe Leopoldo di Toscana e descritte dal segretario di essa Accademia and all the works in the manuscript were published anonymously. This means there are very few actual records of the workings of the society. The lack of historical sources was compounded by the fact that although sixteen volumes of writings of the Accaemia del Cimento were copied in the early eighteenth century by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti, assistant librarian of the Magliabecchi Library, the original manuscripts were lost. The history of the society can only be pieced together through the letters and diaries of the people associated with the operation. The National Library of Florence recently digitized all of these documents and they are available on-line.[1]

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