Guericke, in respect to this timeline map of Guericke’s movements and influence, is said to have conducted ten experiments while in Regensburg, according to a conjectured list made by Hans Schimank (1936), based on the two published accounts by Gaspar Schott (1657; 1663), as reviewed by Thomas Conlon (2011), such as: [7]
1. The crushing of an air-tight vessel as air was withdrawn from it; the air being allowed to expand into a previously evacuated receiver.
2. A number of men were only able to pull an airtight piston halfway up a copper cylinder
3. Extraction of air using a vacuum pump
4. Extinction of a flame in a sealed vessel
5. Raising water vertically inside a vacuum bulb against its natural tendency to fall
“As soon as the Reverend Fathers of the Society of Jesus and the professors of the public University of Werzburg, under the chairman-ship of the same Eminent Elector, had verified these experiments of mine, they wrote out a draft of their findings and communicated them to the scholars in Rome and elsewhere and at the same time sought their opinions. Among this group of particular importance was the Reverend Father Kaspar Schott, Professor of Mathematics at the same university, who wrote me regarding the experiments and sought more information about them. Ultimately, he added, as an Appendix to his book, The Art of Mechanical Hydraulic Pneumatics (De Arte Mechanica Hydraulico-Pneumatica), published in 1657, these ‘new experiments’ of mine and called them "Magdeburgica", and these were set up in type so that they might be available for many to read and study.”— Otto Guericke (1672), New Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (pg. xix)
“These and many other considerations are adduced on both sides of this question. Melchior Cornaeus (Ѻ), professor of theology at our own university of Wurzburg, has learned and at some length argued these matters in a discussion of his own dedicated to this topic. On several occasions he and I observed and carefully scrutinized the experiments in question. When I first saw them, I sent an account to Kircher at Rome and to some other friends and scholars, asking their opinion of them. All of them sided with the Aristotelians against the ‘vacuists’. Among the replies I received was this from Kircher.”— Gaspar Schott (c.1656), summary of communications on Otto Guericke’s vacuum experiments [4]
“I do not hesitate to speak openly and declare without qualification that I have never seen nor heard of any experiments of this kind more worthy of admiration nor read nor even imagined such, and I do not believe that the sun ever shone upon anything like them from time immemorial. And I might add, this is the judgment of powerful princes and learned scholars as well, with whom I have been in communication as regards these experiments, etc.”— Gaspar Schott (1664), Technical Curiosities (pg. 3) [3][6]
