In existographies, Otto Guericke (1602-1686) (IQ:190|#37)

“Because of this, I have been moved, for the good of posterity, to bring up another matter, namely the fact that there are many people, where and elsewhere, who share my name (Gericke) though they are not related to me, often leads to mistaken identity. Also, as foreigners pronounce the initial ‘Ge’ as ‘sch’, my name is often misunderstood. Both these would be rectified by the title ‘von’ and the insertion of a ‘u’ between the ‘G’ and the ‘c’ so that I write my name ‘von Guericke’.”

— Otto Guericke (1665), “Letter to Leopold”, Jan 31

This model, presumably, was the one displayed at Johann Philipp’s residence in Wurzburg (Ѻ), as depicted by Gaspar Schott (1664) in Technical Curiosities (pg. 9), such as shown below, where the so-called "water raising experiment" is being performed:

The following is a map of Guericke's travels, e.g. Regensburg (1654), Wurzburg (c.1655), Vienna (c.1656), as well as influence of ideas spreading, via word of mouth, e.g. Kircher (1656), Philipp (c.1655), etc., and publications, such as Schott (1657), Boyle (1660), etc.: [22]

A depiction Guericke's "weighing of air" experiment, as discussed in his 18 Jun 1656 letter to Gaspar Schott, wherein he weighed an air-filled receiver, then evacuated it, and re-weighted it, finding that it lost two "lobt" (coins) or two ounces. [23]

Guericke, in respect to this timeline map of Guericke’s movements and influence, is said to have conducted ten experiments while in Regensburg, wherein he had a cosmopolitan audience, 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), some of which are: [21]

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 The crushing of an air-tight vessel as air was withdrawn from it; the air being allowed to expand into a previously evacuated receiver.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 (combustion) in a sealed vessel
5. Raising water vertically inside a vacuum bulb against its natural tendency to fall
6. Weighted the air
7. Caused clouds and wind to form in the glass vessels
8. Shattered toughened glass into splinters
9. Showed that sound is not heard in a vacuum (compare the Kircher "bell" in the Berti vacuum, c.1639)

On 22 Jul 1656, Guericke, in a letter to Gaspar Schott, mentions the an experiment where he has tried to have teams of horses pull the sealed hemispheres apart; in a followup 4 Aug 1656 letter to Schott, Guericke states that he has carried out the Magdeburg hemispheres experiment with 12-horses, at a considerable cost; the following shows a 20-horse version, one of many variants performed thereafter: [17]

On 16 Nov 1656, Guericke, in a letter to Gaspar Schott, as published in Technical Curiosities (pg. 37), stated that over the summer he had tried first 16-horses, which he said “could scarcely pull them apart, and later that 24-horses were required. [8] Conlon (2011), of note, points out that it is a frequently "reported myth" that Guericke used horses at the 1654 Imperial Assembly at Regensburg, which was not the case. [8]

In 1658, Guericke attempted to repeat Blaise Pascal’s mountain climbing experiment (see: Pascal atmospheric pressure experiment), by attempting to measure the atmospheric pressure at the base and top of mountain then-named “Brocksburg”; he and an assistant took a vacuum bulb, and supposedly a vacuum pump, measured the pressure at the base, but during the ascent, the servant carrying the glass bulb fell, and it broke. [24]

In c.1659, Guericke, according to Ditmar Schneider (1986), per citation of Gaspar Schott (1664), was performing his so-called “gas test with piston and cylinder”, as shown below, wherein, by connecting the vacuum bulb to the piston, and turning the connecting valve, it forces the piston down with a strong stoke, which he uses to play tug-of-war with 20+ men (left, back), or to lift loads of weight (left, front): [19]

In 1661, Robert Boyle’s New Experiments Physico-Mechanical touching the Spring of Air and its Effects, was translated into Latin, and, via correspondence with Gaspar Schott, Guericke was made aware of the Boyle-Hooke vacuum pump design (see: Hooke vacuum pump), and thus acquired a copy of Boyle’s book. [17]

On 16 Nov 1661, Guericke, writing to Gaspar Schott, relates progress on his new treatise, as follows:

“As far as my treatise, which is in hand, is concerned, I work on writing I during whatever spare time my other occupations allow. It is divided into eight books. The first is entitled ‘About the Cosmos and its Organization According to the More Commonly Received Opinion among Philosophers’; the second is ‘Concerning my own Experiments’; the third, ‘About What is and What is Not’ (this particularly demonstrates that space is infinites and immeasurable); the fourth, ‘Concerning the potencies operating [virtutibus mundanis] in the Cosmos, and Other Associated Topics’; the fifth, ‘concerning the Earth of Land and Sea and its Associate Moon’; the sixth, ‘Concerning the World of the Planets and their True Organization’; the seventh, ‘Concerning the Fixed Stars’; and the eight, ‘Concerning What is at the Limits of the Cosmos’. However, the task is proceeding very slowly both because of the burden of other affairs and because I am without any assistance, I am also having considerable difficulty writing in Latin, since no fewer than 38-years have gone by since I finished studying in universities and during which opportunities for writing only infrequently presented themselves.”

— Otto Guericke (1661), “Letter to Gaspar Schott”, Nov 16 [26]

(add)

Third generation vacuum pump
In c.1662, Guericke, according to vacuum pump historian Anne Helden (1991), had made the following so-called "travel pump", wherein the crank arm is employed to make the vacuum, and the former wooden tub of water is replaced by cone x, to effect the sealing solution, which was given Johann Philipp, and is now on display at the Deutsches Museum, Munich, as photographed below right, and is the oldest extant vacuum pump, which generally is classified as the Guericke third generation vacuum pump: [15]

A timeline showing Guericke, in the context of William Gilbert, Galileo, Johannes Kepler, Niccolo Cabeo, Rene Descartes, Evangelista Torricelli, Robert Boyle, Christiaan Huygens, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton. [11]

In c.1665, Guericke made in improved vacuum pump per the request of Johann Philipp (1605-1673), the Elector of Mainz, who had heard about Guericke's experiments performed at the Regensburg Imperial Assembly (1654).Guericke describes his third-generation "improved vacuum pump" as follows:

“I am replying to the letter written on June 4th Wurzburg and received on June 14th. My experiments are particularly directed to showing that air is nothing other than a fume or evaporation coming from the earth, which it surrounds with a fixed and definite night. It penetrates everything that is not already filled with some other subsume, is carried with the earth as it executes both its daily and annual motions and, along with the earth, constitutes, as it were, a single body. To show this I have set up various experiments but none of them makes the point as well as the one your reverence observed in the presence of the most eminent Elector of Mainz [Johann Philipp]. There you had a pump with two openings. Through one of them the air is introduced and through the other it is expelled. Notwithstanding that I have improved everything a lot since then, the use and point of those experiments is very briefly the following:

1. They make it clear, how great is the weight of the air surrounding us and to what height it drives the water he an evacuated tube.
2. If something else that is not spherical is firmly attached to an evacuated sphere, so that the air from the former is violently drawn into the latter, then it is subject to compression, just like the non-spherical glass containers are, and fragments, with a great bang, into a thousand pieces.
3. We can weigh the air confined in a glass vessel. The weight is given by how much lighter the glass is once it has been evacuated. For example, a receiver, of the sort that medical people use to distilled water, is about three or four lobt [a small coin] lighter after the extraction of the air as you and the eminent Elector of Mainz [Johann Philipp] have seen.
4. From the same experiment we infer the true cause of winds and clouds. For when a wind is created inside a closed glass vessel by shaking it, a cloud appears very shortly thereafter.

“Since the time when I produced the exhibition for the said eminent Elector [Johann Philipp], I have a much better and clearer grasp of all these matters and of many other topics as well.”

— Otto Guericke (1656), “Letter to Gaspar Schott”, Jun 18

In 1656, Guericke was testing whether the two Magdeburg hemispheres could be pulled apart by "teams of men", three on each hemisphere:

“The hemispheres could not be pulled apart by six strong men.”

— Otto Guericke (1656), “Letter to Gaspar Schott”, Jul 22

“He weighed the very archetype of lightness, the air, and, as if god had revealed to him a share in the secrets of creation, he caused clouds and wind to form in glass vessels and through this same air, which we don’t feel on our necks and shoulders thought it washes all around us, he shattered tough glass into splinters.”

— Author (c.1656), “Letter to Someone”; cited by Hans Schimank (1936), in Otto von Guericke: Burgermeister von Magdeburg (pg. 37); cited by Thomas Conlon (2011) in Thinking About Nothingness (pg. 64)

In 1657, Guericke's vacuum experiments were "formerly published" as an appendix of Gaspar Schott's The Art of Mechanical Hydraulic Pneumatics, which therein became the vehicle of transmission to global scholars, in particular Robert Boyle, who had his assistant Robert Hooke reproduce the described device for the purposes of testing:

“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 Gaspar 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)

In early 1657 (or late 1656), Guericke began testing to see if "teams of horses", six pulling on each hemisphere, could pull the evacuated spheres apart:

Guericke with three of his famous experimental devices: the vacuum pump and vacuum bulb (left), his electrostatic generator (center), and his sealed copper pot device (right) for weighing the sound of Magdeburg hemisphere breaking vertically.

“Experiments with the two exactly-fitting dishes or hemispheres has now been carried through. I wrote to your reverence that six strong men would hardly be able to pull them apart. Shortly thereafter I actually tried it out (which was a costly undertaking) and found that "twelve horses" could hardly separate them. Indeed, if all the air were to be extracted perhaps not even sixteen could do it. As soon as the air is introduced through the opening tap, the hemispheres come apart of their own accord.”

— Otto Guericke (1657), “Letter to Someone”, Aug 4

In 1661, Guericke was reporting that he had found that somewhere between sixteen (8-horses on each side) to twenty-four horses (12-horses on each side) were required to pull the spheres apart, meaning, in effect, that the pulling force of about 10-horses, on average, was required to lift a 62-mile (see: Karman line) column of atmosphere (about 6-inches in diameter) off the ground of the earth:

“This summer, I have done some new things. In one experiment, "sixteen horses" could scarcely separate them, and in another, "twenty-four" horses were required.”

— Otto Guericke (1661), “Letter to Gaspar Schott”, Nov 16

In 1660 (or 1663), Guericke invented his “electrical machine”, which he described in his New Magdeburg Experiments (1672), wherein he described electrical conduction and repulsion, similar to what had been described earlier by Cabeo in 1629. [12]

Over the years, Guericke, according to his great-grandson Biedersee, spent an estimated 20,000 thalers, on experiments and machines, using his own money, which equates (Ѻ)(Ѻ), via inflationary terms, to about $600,000 USD (2017). [8]

Presently, at the Guericke exhibition in Lukasklause, Magdeburg, a replica (Ѻ) of Guericke’s original pumps and experimental devices are on display (Ѻ) over two floors. (Ѻ)

A diagram showing the Galileo engine (1638) thought experiment and the Guericke beer keg vacuum experiment (1647), both being similar attempts to measure and make a vacuum respectively, using nearly similar experimental designs (e.g. water in both devices; both devices wood)? Guericke, according to most historical concensus, was said to have done his 1647 vacuum experiments "independently", i.e. without any knowledge of the vacuum experiments done prevoius to him in Italy (Galileo, 1638; Berti, 1639; Torriicelli, 1644) and France (Pascal, 1648). The question is an unresolved puzzling issue, presently.

Independence?
A salient question that resounds, in the experiments of Guericke, is whether or not, in the early years of his experimentation, 1647 to 1653, he invented all these various experiments "independently", or whether he had been influenced? The adjacent diagram comparing the Galileo vacuum engine (1638) with the Guericke vacuum barrel experiment (1647) visualizes what seems to an "obvious" similarity?

The following are few example quotes that poke in this direction:

“Here stood a man entirely on his own. There was no Medici family to put resources at his disposal. Scientifically, he was in a less favorable situation than the members of the Florentine Academia del Cimento who could advise each other. He had to think out for himself every little artifact and design emery piece of auxiliary apparatus so that it could be made by a Magdeburg based business. Perhaps it is this that is at the root of the preference, that all his experiments show, for a certain unsophisticated directness. When someone in Florence carried out experiments on the pressure of the air, he could rely on the availability of the highest technical expertise. Here in Magdeburg, the equipment for scientific research was the solid and durable work of a local forge. While this, on the one hand, made it harder to perform experiments it also, on the other, gave them an overwhelming direct impact.”

— Hans Schimank (1936), Otto von Guericke (pg. 40)

“This work, which is described in all standard histories of science, was paralleled in Germany by experiments performed by Otto von Guericke around 1650. Surprisingly, von Guericke seems at first to have had no knowledge of what had been done by Berti, Torricelli, or Pascal, but worked quite independently, probably on the basis of what he had read of Giovanni Porta and similar authors. His approach was therefore rather different from that of the Italians. For example, in an attempt to deter-mine whether a vacuum could be created artificially, he success-fully pumped water out of an airtight copper vessel. Improving his apparatus, he soon recognized that air itself was a fluid and, like water, could be pumped out of the vessel. ft was then a small step to redesign a conventional pump for the purpose, and so he invented an air pump. Following this demonstration, a man named Caspar Schott was asked to write an account of it. Schott had been a pupil of a priest named Athanasius Kircher, who had actually been present at Berti's experiments in Rome. Indeed, it is possible that von Guericke first learned of the Italian work through Schott. Both Schott and Kircher were Jesuits, and we may comment in passing that they were just two of many seventeenth-century Jesuits who had an interest in science—several in Italy during Galileo's time were expert astronomers.”

— Arnold Pacey (1992), The Maze of Ingenuity (pgs. 84-85)

“Working entirely as a self-funded amateur, Guericke gained a permanent place in the scientific community, through three original achievements: the invention of the vacuum pump, the first demonstration of electrostatic repulsion, and the pioneering of the concept of absolute space. Inter alia, he also independently invented the barometer, associated low pressure with stormy weather, weighted air, investigated sound and combustion in the vacuum, and estimated the height of the atmosphere.”

— Thomas Conlon (2011), Thinking About Nothing (pg. 7) [8]

“One interesting question to ask here is whether von Guericke conceived of his experiments on his own, as Pascal did, unaware of the specifics of Torricelli's work. That may well be the case. On the other hand, there are some interesting connections among some of the aforementioned individuals. Berti's experiments were witnessed by Athanasius Kircher, a well-known scholar based in Rome with a deep interest in steam. Kircher, in turn, had a German pupil, Caspar Schott, who returned to Germany at the end of the Thirty Years' War after teaching in Italy for twenty years at the time von Guericke started his experiments. In fact, the two of them developed a correspondence. These connections reveal the type of channels through which, and the speed at which, scientific information flowed and make it clear that von Guericke was aware of, and became inspired by, the Italians' work on the physics of the atmosphere.”

— Harry Kitsikopoulos (2015), Innovation and Technological Diffusion (pg. 13)

These three quotes, as we see, attempt to stitch a communication trail from Schott to Kircher, or Guericke to Kircher, and from him to Berti, and from Berti-Kircher interaction to Torricelli, Pascal, Galileo. In respect to this conjecture, we know that the Schott-Kircher letter exchanges, did not begin until 1650; also that Schott did not become aware of Guericke until the 1654 Regensburg convention.

The earliest known connecting point, in respect to this conjectured “Galileo, Berti, Kircher, Guericke” link, is that in Sep 1651 to Jun 1652, Hans Otto Guericke (1628-1704), Guericke’s son, during a visit to Italy, met Kircher in person, and “conveyed his father’s greetings” (Conlon, 2011), meaning that the Kircher-Guericke connection might have begun years back? [8]

We know that in 1654, during the Imperial Diet in Regensburg, Guericke learned about the Evangelista Torricelli and his Torricelli vacuum mercury experiment (1644), specifically from Valerianus Magnus (1586-1661) (Ѻ), who gave him a demonstration of the inverted mercury column, and also a copy of his book Ocular Demonstrations (1648). [27]

We know that by 1662, Guericke had learned of the Robert Boyle / Robert Hooke vacuum pump, from Gaspar Schott, who informed him about this, and that he had obtained a copy of Boyle’s book New Experiments on the Spring of the Air (1660).

In respect to Galileo, the linchpin of the entire vacuum affair, we know that Guericke, his 1672 New Magdeburg Experiments, cites Galileo’s Dialogus Cosmicus [Book Name], via a preface quote, as well as his De Systemate Mundi (Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems) (1635), but NOT specifically his Dialogue Concerning the Two New Sciences (1638), in which the vacuum thought experiment (see: Galileo engine), pictured above (right), is found. Guericke, accordingly, by 1672, was certainly well-acquainted with Galileo.

“Throughout New Experiments, Guericke shows himself conversant with Galileo's work and alludes to him frequently and favourably. But the ‘Galileo affair’, which loomed so large in later centuries, so far fails to excite his indignation that it does not even rate a mention. It may well be that a man who had spent the prime of his adult life amidst the horrors of the Thirty Years War and who exercised political authority as a professional, did not recognize the confinement of an elderly professor to his villa for gratuitously cheeking the powerful of the day as the iconic outrage it later transpired to be.”

— Thomas Conlon (2011), Thinking About Nothing (pg. 87)

The remaining open question is: was Guericke aware of the "Galileo engine", as published in Galileo's Dialogues Concerning the Two New Sciences (1638), when he did his beer keg vacuum experiment (1647)? The following, in Guericke's own words, is how he was led into an investigation of the vacuum:

“Since I had deliberated on these questions for a long time and had likewise been engaged in active study of the structure of the world [universe], not only did the great mass of these world bodies and their enormous distances lead me to doubt that the human intelligence could comprehend them, but also, and most particularly of all, did vast, intermediate, and endless space fill me with curiosity and infuse me with a desire to investigate it. For indeed, what is it? Inasmuch as it contains all things, it serves as a place for ‘being’ and ‘existing’. Is it by chance some fiery heavenly matter? Is it solid, as Aristotelians assert? Is it fluid, ad Copernicus and Tycho Brahe believe? Is it some sort of tenuous fifth essence? Or, is space completely devoid of all matter, a ‘vacuum’, as it were?”

— Otto Guericke (1672), “Why the Author Was Led to Investigate the Vacuum” in: New Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (§§: Book 2, §: Chapter 1, pg. 84)

Moreover, Guericke, in his 1682 publication, is fairly frank about how he came to learn about Torricelli. If he was to have "thought up" is beer barrel experiment, from seeing Galileo's vacuum measuring machine "thought experiment", it would seem, in line with his general mode of operation, to acknowledge this, similarly? Guericke, after all, was aimed at the big picture view of things: god, vacuum, space, being and becoming, and certainly not petty issues of rights to "discovery" so often seen in later scenarios in the history of thermodynamics (e.g. conservation of energy; see: founders of thermodynamics and suicide). There could, however, have been some sort of subtle influence, in respect to transmission of ideas, that we are not able to "see"? All-in-all, in respect to probability, presently, it would seem to be the case, that there is a 48% likelihood, or less, that Guericke actually "saw" a picture of the Galileo engine (1638) prior to making his beer keg experiment (1647). This conjecture, however, could certainly be wrong.
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A sketch of Guericke thing about the existence of vacuums, while, supposedly, two of his friends laugh at his theory that a vacuum could exist between to hemispheres.

See main: Magdeburg hemispheres

Guericke's circa 1663 electrostatic generator: a device he used to disprove William Gilbert's magnetic earth theory of gravity. [6]

Guericke’s wooden man on water column barometer, from Illustration X, Figure IV, of Schott diagrams, which varied up or down by sever hand lengths, according to atmospheric pressure, which he used to predict when storms were near.

“God and nature create nothing that is without purpose or use or is imperfect in itself.”

— Otto Guericke (1663), New Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (pg. 238)

“If mortal souls were to understand the innermost workings of the universe, royal power and might would be nothing more to them than meaningless froth.”

— Anon (c.1600), Source; opening preface quote to Otto Guericke’s 1670 Magdeburg Experiments

“It follows from this that all science is empty, deceptive, and pointless unless it is supported by experiment. What inconsistencies otherwise successful and perceptive scholars bring forth without its help! It is experimentation that dissolves all doubts, reconciles difficulties, is a unique teacher of the truth, furnishes a torch in darkness and instructs us how to determine the true causes of things by disentangling knotty problems.”

— Athanasius Kircher (1631), Ars Magnetica (pg. 570); cited by Otto Guericke (1672) in New Magdeburg Experiments (pg. xvii)

“A thousand Demosthenes, a thousand Aristotles can be laid prostrate by a single man of mediocre talent who has seized upon a better way to find the truth. Such a hope, therefore, must be removed: for indeed, men, more learned and superior to us in book-learning, will be found who, to the same of nature itself, can make that which is, in fact, false, true.”

— Galileo (1632), Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems (character: Salviati (Ѻ)); cited by Guericke in "Preface" to Magdeburg Experiments

A colorized photo of Guericke. [17]

“I should immediately proceed to the mention of my experiments, but that I like too well that worthy saying of the naturalist Pliny: ‘It is a virtue and manifestation of a fitting modesty to acknowledge anyone through whom one has made progress’, not to conform to it, by acquainting your lordship, in the first place, with the hint I had of the engine I am to entertain you of. You may be pleased to remember, that a while before our separation in England, I told you of a book that I had heard of but not perused, published by the industrious Jesuit Schottus [Gaspar Schott], wherein it was said he related how that ingenious gentleman, Otto Gericke, Consul of Magdeburg, had lately practiced in Germany a way of emptying glass vessels, by sucking out the air at the mouth of the vessel, plunged under water. And you may also perhaps remember, that I expressed myself much delighted with this experiment, since thereby the great force of the external air (either rushing in at the opened orifice of the emptied vessel, or violently forcing up the water into it) was rendered more obvious and conspicuous, than in any experiment that I had formerly seen. And though it may appear by some of those writings I sometimes showed your lordship, that I had been solicitous to try things upon the same ground; yet in regard this Gentleman was before-hand with me in producing such considerable effects, by means of the ex-suction of air, I think myself obliged to acknowledge the assistance, and encouragement the report of his performance bath afforded me.”

— Robert Boyle (1660), “Preface” to New Experiments Physico-Mechanical Touching the Spring of the Air [9]

“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) [7]

“I have also the opinion of Kaspar Peucer and Jean Bodin who contend that evil spirits and genii exercise great power, with divine permission, in the heavens and over the earth.”

— Sanislaus Lubienietzki (1665), “Letter to Otto Guericke”, on the comet of 1664/1665, Mar 4/14; by Otto Guericke (1663) in New Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (pg. 287)

“Boyle improved on the pneumatic engine invented by Otto Guericke, and was thereby enabled to make several new and curious experiments on the air, as well as on other bodies: his chemistry is much admired by those who are acquainted with that art: his hydrostatics contain a greater mixture of reasoning and invention with experiment than any other of his works; but his reasoning is still remote from that boldness and temerity which had led astray so many philosophers.”

— David Hume (1836), The History of England, Volume Two (pg. 653)

“In contrast to the Cartesian caution, in Germany — where orthodox Cartesianism never gained a foothold — several prominent thinkers embraced the belief that the fixed stars were surrounded by planets and spread throughout an infinite universe. The Ecstatic Celestial Journey (Iter exstaticum coeleste), 1656, by the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher explicitly characterized the fixed stars as suns with encircling planets, although it denied inhabitants even to the planets of our solar system and to the moon. And Otto von Guericke, famous for the ‘Magdeburg experiments’ proving the existence of a vacuum, devoted a section of his Experimenta Nova (1672) to an examination and endorsement of Kircher's view of other planetary systems. Von Guericke also noted the possibility of an inhabited moon and planets, and emphasized (following Galileo) that any inhabitants would not be men, but rather diverse creatures beyond all our imaginings. But von Guericke denied Descartes's equation of extension and matter, and instead traced his ideas to Galileo, Kepler, Antonius de Rheita, Mersenne, Bruno, and Nicholas of Cusa.”

— Steven Dick (1984), Plurality of Worlds (pg. 116)

“Guericke was destitute at thirty; when he gave the superbly crafted [mechanical] celestial globe [which he made] to Torstenson he was forty-four; when he appeared at Regensburg with a thought-out position on one of the great philosophical questions of the day [on the vacuum] and able to support it with experiments, he was fifty-two; when he completed his Experiments Nova he was sixty-one.”

— Thomas Conlon (2011), Thinking About Nothing (pg. 38)

“Beside this world-famous [Magdeburg hemispheres] experiment, Otto von Guericke used the vacuum for many other demonstrations. At the Reichstag in Regensburg, he demonstrated that water flows upwards against its natural flow-direction into an air-evacuated glass container or that a candle extinguishes very quickly under vacuum or that, despite the obvious hammer blow against the bell, a clock does not make an audible sound. He could also report from a long-term experiment that grapes could be conserved under vacuum for half a year.”

— Anon (2020), “The First Vacuum Pump” [16]

See main: Guericke quotes

“Could empty space exist, and is heavenly space unbounded?”

— Otto Guericke (1972), The Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (pg. #) [5]

“Theories which are demonstrated by experiment and visual perception must be preferred to those derived from reasoning, however probable and plausible, for many things seem true in speculation and discussion, which in actual fact defy reality.”

— Otto Guericke (1663), New Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (pg. xvii)

“Because, in truth, scholars have sharply disputed with one another for a long time the question of the vacuum -- does it exist or not? or what is it? -- and each one has defended his theory like a determined soldier defending a stronghold against an attacking enemy, for this reason I felt a burning desire to investigate the truth of this question which has been a source of dispute, not being able to lay my feelings to rest nor extinguish them until I should find time to carry out an experiment involving the vacuum. I performed this experiment in a number of ways and my efforts were not unrewarded: indeed, I designed several pieces of apparatus to prove the existence of that vacuum whose existence had always been denied. Later on, when I had been sent on behalf of the state to the Imperial Diet being held in Regensburg, in 1654, several enthusiastic followers of these kinds of investigations had heard about my aforementioned experiments: they succeeded in convincing me to demonstrate some of them and I endeavored to do this insofar as I could, considering the limits of my capabilities.”

— Otto Guericke (1663), New Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (pgs. xviii-xix)

“The aim of this book, is to recall from ingrained and poorly conceived imaginings all who do not labor under preconceived opinions, but regard the experiments dispassionately and weigh them on the fair scale of truth, having acquired from them rich experience and knowledge. Indeed, when there is evidence from facts, words are not necessary. One need not dispute and take up arms against an opponent who denies experiments that are completely reliable; let such a one keep for himself his own opinion and dig in the dark like a mole. An ‘exact science’ does not march into battle but celebrates its victory and rests in the deep tranquility of truth. Other branches of science, however, are subject to controversy because they are devoid of the rational certitude in which an exact science is rich. So, it comes about that the human spirit, after it has wandered for a long time in the circle of arts and science finally comes to find rest in the certain knowledge of an exact science.”

— Otto Guericke (1663),New Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (pgs. xx-xxi)

“It is our wish that the contents of this work be encompassed by the cloistered walls of natural science and not slip out from these confines into other fields that are perhaps mixed with faith or belief: rather, this treatise must be limited by the principles of natural science alone made manifest by experimentation. But should some thoughtless or inadvertent remark slip out contrary to our intention, however, we should like to retract this statement herewith. We grant to everyone the freedom of dissent but for our part we are prepared to follow truth rather than agreement for the sake of harmony. As for the rest, we believe that there will be no lack of keen and perspicacious minds, being stimulated by my experiments to arrive at perhaps better and deeper insights, who are going to undertake this work at some future time.”

— Otto Guericke (1663), New Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (pgs. xxi-xxii)

“Place in itself has no real existence. Rather it is a creation of the mind or imagination, an individual and particular relationship, as it were, of one thing with respect to another. When one thing has taken away, then another takes its place and when this in turn is removed, its place is again filled and vise versa. Furthermore, just as ‘place’ has no real existence, neither does time.”

— Otto Guericke (1663), New Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (pg. 85)

“An ‘empty place’ or ‘vacuum’ is the cause of a very great effect in nature. Experiments, discussed in our subsequent book, demonstrate an exaggeration of this characteristic when air or water enters evacuated glass vessels, surging in with ‘great force’ contrary to the usual course in nature.”

— Otto Guericke (1663), New Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (pgs. 86-87)

“We do not regard a vacuum, in terms of its vacuity, as something of ‘real existence’, but rather as a lack or absence as shadow is the absence of light or as blindness is the absence of sight, conditions which have no real existence in themselves. Furthermore, as death is the extinction of life, so death is without reality [see: death does not exist]. In the same way a vacuum is the absence of fullness, but in no way does it follow that a lack or absence of this or that thing, which is commonly called a ‘vacuum’, is of real existence.”

— Otto Guericke (1663), Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (pg. 88)

“Nothingness contains all things; it is more precious than gold, free from birth and destruction, more pleasant than the sight of pure light, more noble than the blood of kings, comparable with the sky and higher than the stars, more powerful than a bolt of lightning, perfect and rich in all its parts.”

— Otto Guericke (1972), The Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (pg. 99); cited by Edward Grant (1981) in Much Ado About Nothing (pg. 216); cited by Helge Kragh (2014) in The Weight of the Vacuum (pg. 6)

“Air extends and expands itself more or less according to a greater or lesser intensity of heat. Warm air, consequently, occupies a larger space and cold a smaller.”

— Otto Guericke (1663), Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (pg. 112); see: Boerhaave’s law

“The air surrounding the earth presses upon itself because it is corporeal and has a certain weight. Indeed, the upper air presses down increasingly heavily on the lower. Thus, it follows that the lower air here, which surrounds us, is much denser than the upper air.”

— Otto Guericke (1663), Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (pgs. 112-13); see: Karman line

“Hang a glass of this kind [see: Illustration 10, Fig III in Schott diagrams, or Fig III adjacent] from a balance and weigh it, with the stop-cọcks open, however, so that you may be certain that the glass is filled with air. Then evacuate all air from it and you will discover that after this has been done, it weighs one or two ounces less than its capacity. Thus, after my receiver has been exhausted and is surrounded by the pressure of the atmosphere, it will be found, when examined on the balance, to be two ounces lighter than before, being equal in weight to two imperial thalers. Furthermore, if should be remarked here that a glass vessel of this kind which is attached to a balance with its stop-cọck open, always fluctuates in weight. For in warmer weather, when the air is expanded, the receiver is lighter. When it is colder, however, the vessel is heavier because it holds more air in it.”

— Otto Guericke (1663), Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (pg. 156)

“As for the opinions of Epigenes, Bienewitz, Cardano, Scaliger, let these pass because they are not apposite to the subject and I do not have the at hand right now a copy of their work. As for whether storms are stirred by demons, as Paracelsus holds, this should be discussed at some length and a distinction should be made between the demons.”

— Otto Guericke (1665), “Reply Letter to Sanislaus Lubienietzki”, Mar 29; in New Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (pg. 289)

“So far as the main part of the work is concerned, it is principally about the right understanding and perception of the universal vessel or container of all things, which I, to use one word, call ‘space’ but not understood in its usual three-dimensional sense, but as that in which every body and every substance either has its being and subsistence or could so have. Space yields to nothing and is not displaced according to the volume of the body it receives; it is permanent and immobile, everywhere in everything and through everything, whether corporeal or incorporeal and to which nothing brings being whether it is occupied or empty.”

— Otto Guericke (1671), “Letter to Gottfried Leibniz”, Jun 6; cited by Thomas Conlon (2011) in Thinking About Nothing (pg. 90)

“There are different minerals that, poured together with sulphur into a ball about the size of two fats, allow a usual demonstration of what I have named ‘mundane virtues’ (virtutes mundanae). Tycho Brahe writes that he would very much like to support Copernicus, if only the earth were not such a heavy body. My experiments show the contrary is true — the earth is not as heavy as the lightest feather. Likewise, Galileo in his treatise thinks that one cannot grasp the reason why the moon follows the earth and always presents the same fade towards it. I show with the same spherical ball that this happens through particular forces of nature. When the ball is first rubbed, e.g., somewhat by hand and then a light feather is held close to it, the ball first attracts the feather to itself, but then soon repels it as far as the range of its force (orbis virtutis) allows. Then, wherever the ball goes the feather goes too, hovering in the air, so that one can bring it to any desired point even up to someone's nose. It always presents the same side to the spherical ball, so that, by means of this ball, once can turn it in the air, as one pleases. Likewise, many other remarkable things can be demonstrated using this ball.”

— Otto Guericke (c.1672), “Letter to Gottfried Leibniz”; cited by Thomas Conlon (2011) in Thinking About Nothing (pgs. 84-85)

“So, it would be impossible for a rock that was dropped to fall to the earth’s center, if a tunnel through the planet existed. Nature does not allow a stone whose natural place is the exterior surface of the earth to be found in the interior.”

— Otto Guericke (1672), New Magdeburg Experiments [11]