Torricelli's ballistic tables
After Galileo's death his assistant and successor at the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Evangelista Torricelli, brought out in 1644 the Opera geometrica; in the tract De motu gravium in this collection he developed Galileo's theory of projectile motion: he computed the envelope of all parabolas for a given initial velocity and various angles of elevation (the parabola of safety), and appended to the tract numerical tables from which the gunner could pick the required angle.
Here Galilean mechanics leaves the book and reaches the hands of a practitioner. The similar tables of Tartaglia 1537 had been empirical; now they rest on a formula. Artillery textbooks referred to them for more than a century.
Why this date
exact: Florence, 1644, Opera geometrica, tract De motu gravium.
What it grew from
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Parabolic trajectory of a projectile
prerequisite for · Confidence: high
Torricelli, Galileo's assistant and his successor at court, carried on precisely the work on the parabolic motion of a projectile that Galileo published in 1638.
Link sources
- MacTutor History of Mathematics, «Evangelista Torricelli» Verified 28 Sep 2026
This basically carried on developing Galileo's study of the parabolic motion of projectiles
"Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong.
- MacTutor History of Mathematics, «Evangelista Torricelli» Verified 28 Sep 2026
Node sources
- MacTutor History of Mathematics, «Evangelista Torricelli» Verified 5 Oct 2026
De motu gravium which was published as part of Torricelli's 1644 Opera geometrica
- MacTutor History of Mathematics, «Evangelista Torricelli» Verified 5 Oct 2026
Also in De motu gravium Torricelli studied projectile motion.
- MacTutor History of Mathematics, «Evangelista Torricelli»: «Война и осада». Verified 5 Oct 2026
He also gave numerical tables which would help gunners find the correct elevation of their guns to give the required range.
"Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong.