Have you ever heard of Raffaello Lambruschini and his ideas?
If the answer is no, I suggest you read this article very carefully to find out the many nuances of his character that are part of his greatness. He is a prominent character of the mid-nineteenth century! Let’s get to know him…
Raphaello Lambruschini was an Italian politician, religious, agronomist and pedagogist, born in Genoa in 1788, who led the Figline Valdarno one of the first public schools in the mid-nineteenth century.
In 1814, after renouncing the ecclesiastical career, begun in Rome, because he didn’t share papal politics, he withdrew into the solitude of his paternal estate in San Cerbone. Here he alternated the meditations of religious and moral problems with agricultural occupations by elaborating a theorem on the turning of turf, which became very important for plowing.
Lambruschini, was only interested in shape of the plough blades, claiming that the ideal shape for these was the ellipse because it allowed to save energy.
Since the side of the prism detached from the ground that rotates on the blade, is its base, Lambruschini said it was on the size of this base, that the rotation needed to turn the turf on its side must in proportion to be in a balanced position. For the turf to rotate and exceed the perpendicular position, and settle on its side about a sixth of the length of the blader must be eliminated.
Hence he proceeded to make a wooden mould from which the metallic plow was then crafted by his friend Marquis Ridolfi, the greatest Italian agronomist of the time, in his first version of the classic Brabant plow, then called “Plow Ridolfi”.
This started the origin of plows designed according to physical stereo calculus.
Even though his ideas were absolutely original in theory, Lambruschini’s research would in fact not produce specific practical consequences … And it is with Ridolfi and Lapo De ‘Ricci that Lambruschini founded, precisely in the year 1827, a periodical called “Tuscan Agrarian Journal”.
This newspaper became the main instrument of the project for the renewal of agriculture and the elevation of the moral and material conditions of the peasants conceived by the leading classes of Tuscany.
A partire dall’anno 1831, Lambruschini organizzò, proprio a Figline, quella che verrà chiamata “la scuola delle feste”… Si tratta di una scuola d’istruzione professionale rivolta ai giovani artigiani, ai quali venivano impartite nozioni di disegno, di geometria e di meccanica, molto utili per il loro lavoro quotidiano.
From the year 1831, Lambruschini organized, at Figline, what would be known as “the festive school ” … This is a professional education school aimed at young artisans, who were taught concepts of design, geometry and of mechanics, which was very useful for their daily work.
It goes without saying that the aims of rational plow building are: the large over turn of dug up turf and its simultaneous break up.
These are two operations that the farmer performs with successive gestures, but which a functional plow must accomplish with a continuous action. And, from a postulate of a traditionalist trait, it is therefore a deduction of great innovative value in a region whose characteristic plow removed the soil practically without turning it.
Unfortunately, the Lambruschini paper will be ignored by the European agricultural world, so that French writers who are not without prestige will make it the object of servile plagiarism, just five years after its publication. You’re wondering why … Well, the reason is simple: they have had the presumption to take a work, that oblivion has turned into a free source of information