Quintino Sella esperto di strumenti professionali, scientifici e didattici. Carteggi con Gustave Froment e Louis Saemann

Abstract

The first part of the article summarises Sella’s activity in purchasing instruments on the international market to equip the Royal Technical Institute of Turin where he taught before embarking on his political career. In the second part, the article reports and comments on the letters sent by G. Froment (17) and L. Saemann (8) to Q. Sella. No letters sent by Sella to these two correspondents are known. All these letters are preserved at the Fondazione Sella onlus in Biella. The first correspondence deals with the construction of an electromagnetic sorter and an instrument for measuring the sliding friction of minerals ordered by Sella to G. Froment, a renowned manufacturer of scientific instruments in Paris. The second correspondence concerns the mutual trade in mineral specimens for collection and study between Q. Sella and L. Saemann, a renowned scientific dealer in Paris. Short profiles illustrate the activities of Sella’s two Parisian correspondents