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Curated category

Italian inventions

  • ViolinThe cupola of Madonna dei Miracoli in Saronno, Italy, dates from 1535 and depicts angels playing violin, viola, and cello.
  • CelloThe word cello comes from the Italian violoncello, which means little violone. Violone translates to big viola and referred to large instruments in either…
  • Perspective (graphical)Rays of light travel from a cube through the picture plane and to the viewer's eye. This movement creates linear or point-projection perspective, one of two…
  • RadioHeinrich Hertz stood in a laboratory on the 11th of November 1886. He held a primitive spark-gap transmitter that generated invisible waves.
  • Roman lawIn 451 BC, ten Roman citizens known as the decemviri legibus scribundis were chosen to record laws. They held supreme political power while magistrates lost…
  • Electric batteryIn 1749, Benjamin Franklin used the term battery to describe a set of linked Leyden jar capacitors. He grouped multiple jars together to store stronger…
  • OperaJacopo Peri wrote Dafne around 1597 for an elite circle of literate Florentine humanists known as the Camerata de' Bardi.
  • Gini coefficientIn 1912, Italian statistician Corrado Gini published a paper titled Variabilità e mutabilità. This document introduced the concept that would eventually bear…
  • Magic lanternDutch scientist Christiaan Huygens sketched a skeleton taking off its skull in the year 1659. He wrote notes above the drawing that read for representations…
  • BankBánk exists as a quiet municipality in the northern Hungarian county of Nógrád, yet its population history reveals a story of resilience and slow decline…