Christiaan Huygens – A family affair - Proeven van Vroeger

moment for these events. 363 As Huygens was one out of three (groups of) people who devised
and possessed an air pump, 364 he received many high-ranked requests for experimental
showings to the extent that, in order to relieve the almost daily burden on his other work, he
would some days tell people that the pump did not work – while in fact it did. 365 As a
gentleman’s house always ought to be open, Huygens needed to find other ways to create the
privacy, required for doing his own experiments. 366
The most significant experimental meetings however happened at the Montmor
Académie and the Royal Society – for here the working of Huygens’s machine and the
phenomenon of anomalous suspension would be tested and given or denied the status of matter
of fact. 367 In Paris, Lodewijk was employed as Christiaan’s representative at the Montmor-
Académie from the end of 1661 throughout 1662, assigned with the task to instruct Jean
Chapelain on the technical working of the machine and how to obtain the desired effects.
Lodewijk received extensive information on the machine and its operation, being entrusted the
experimental showing of the machine to Chapelain and together with him, to the Parisian
group (a group that Lodewijk also frequented). 368 When the first showings for the Académie
took place, it turned out, however, that Lodewijk had forgotten to instruct Chapelain on one or
363 Ibid., Vol. IV, No. 1067 (Oct. 5, 1662): When “one of those venerable princesses of Portugal”
unexpectedly came by the house of the Huygens in The Hague in her coach “le Seigneur de Zeelhem”
(Constantijn Jr.) had to ask pardon and send her away with empty hands. In her eagerness to see the
instrument at work, she had knocked at the door at eight in the morning, disturbing a sick Constantijn
in his sleep.
364 SHAPIN, S. & SCHAFFER, S. (1985) Leviathan and the air-pump : Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental
life : including a translation of Thomas Hobbes, Dialogus physicus de natura aeris by Simon Schaffer, Princeton,
N.J., Princeton University Press., p229. The other two were the group around Robert Boyle in England
and the Accademia del Cimento in Italy.
365 See: Ibid., p246. “He [Huygens] told Lodewijk on 25 September/5 October 1662 that he had so many
visitors demanding to see the machine that he was forced to pretend that the pump was not working: but
“for the most part I am not lying, since it can scarcely ever remain in its perfection because of the piston
which easily goes wrong.” Quoted from: HUYGENS, C. (1888) OC., Vol. IV, p245
366 In many ways, Christiaan had the same problem as his colleague in England, Robert Boyle, had. See:
SHAPIN, S. (1988) The house of experiment in 17th-century England. Isis: International Review devoted to
the History of Science and its Cultural Influences.
367 Huygens did not manage to replicate Boyle's observation of the fall of a Torricellian column of water
inside a receiver which he had evacuated of air with a pump similar to Boyle’s and Hooke’s. Despite the
fact that he had purged the water of air by leaving it in the receiver of the air-pump for many hours, the
water did not descend in the receiver. Huygens's result was dubbed “anomalous suspension.” More on
the phenomenon: SHAPIN, S. & SCHAFFER, S. (1985) Leviathan and the air-pump, p241.
368 Christiaan wrote Lodewijk with detailed information on the working of his air-pump – it shows that
the instrument was difficult to handle, and the effects hard to realize: HUYGENS, C. (1888) OC., Vol.
IV, No. 977 (Feb. 15, 1662). Lodewijk, on his turn, informed Chapelain: Vol. IV, No. 1008 (Apr. 30,
1662); No. 1016 (May, 1662) and, together with Chapelain, he presented the machine at the Montmor-
Académie: Vol. IV, No. 1007 (Apr. 26, 1662). Christiaan kept following all this by mail: Vol. IV, No.
1014-5 (May 18, 1662); No. 1020-1 (June, 1662).
105