VACUUM ORIGINS

Even if the current vacuum machine has been invented only recently, its origins date back to the vacuum discovery.

Vacuum has always been an interesting element for the humankind, beginning from the ancient greeks. Aristotele was the first one who analysed this concept: he asserted that vacuum doesn’t exist and with his opinion he influenced the way of thinking for 2 thousand years.

According to Aristotele, nature refuses vacuum as when matter is removed from a place (in this case air), new matter fills the remaining space (horror vacui concept).

Stradone di Lampsaco, Ctesibio and other scientists didn’t agree with Aristotele’s theory: they begun studying the air complexity, asserting that vacuum exists but only in small quantities between the different particles of the air (concept of vacuum intermixtum).

In the Middle Ages the discussion about vacuum existance became interesting also for arab scientists. All these theories contributed to delvelop the vacuum concept, but who is the real inventor? His name is Otto von Guericke, a german scientist who created the first vacuum pump.

Von Guericke was used to study air and vacuum making public experiments in order to show how all the objects are immersed in air. One of his most famous experiments called “The Magdeburg hemispheres: they are a pair of large copper hemispheres, with mating rims. They were used to demonstrate the power of atmospheric pressure: when the rims were sealed with grease and the air was pumped out, the sphere contained vacuum and could not be pulled apart even from horses. As soon as the air was reintroduced in the hemispheres, it was possible to separate them.

Robert Boyle was able to improve this technique and made new experiments whose descriptions are collected in a book called “The sceptical chymist”.

Thanks to all these scientists, we were able to develop new theories about vacuum and now the vacuum technique is used in a lot of industrial sectors.

The vacuum technique is used in the industrial, commercial and domestic sector for various purposes: protecting different materials from powder and microbes contamination or in order to preserve products in modified atmoshere, as well as for cooking.