The heritage of ancient scientific instruments of the Liceo "F. Delpino" in Chiavari Salvatore Ganci 1 and Roberto Massone 2 1 Studio di Catalogazione e Conservazione Strumenti Scientifici, 16030 Casarza Ligure, Italy. 2 Liceo Classico Statale “Federico Delpino”, 16043 Chiavari, Italy. E-mail: museodellascienza.s.ganci@gmail.com (Received 8 February 2013, accepted 27 June 2013) Abstract This historical paper deals with the remarkable heritage of ancient scientific instruments in Liceo “Federico Delpino” in Chiavari. This old high School was founded in 1749 and therefore it is one of the ancient high schools in Italy. It is quite obvious that in the XIX century and the XX century, this school has accumulated a significant amount of scientific equipment, but the secular isolation of such a little town out of the major cultural centers makes this fact as an anomalous. Our paper would outline the historic value of this heritage and analyze a possible key to understand this “strange” phenomenon. This paper also aims at stimulating the reader about the possible presence in Brazil and in (the) South America of scientific equipment built by craftsmen from Chiavari. Keywords: History, Scientific Instruments, Science Museums. Resumen En este trabajo se aborda el patrimonio histórico notable de los antiguos instrumentos científicos en el Liceo "Federico Delpino" en Chiavari. Este antiguo instituto fue fundado en 1749 y por lo tanto es una de las antiguas escuelas de Italia. Es evidente que en el siglo XIX y el siglo XX, esta escuela ha acumulado una cantidad importante de equipo científico, pero el aislamiento secular de un pueblo pequeño lejos de los grandes centros culturales hace que este hecho sea una anomalía. Nuestro artículo esbozará el valor histórico de este patrimonio y analizará una posible clave para entender este fenómeno "extraño". Asimismo, este artículo tiene por objeto estimular al lector acerca de la posible presencia en Brasil y en Sudamérica sobre equipos científicos construidos por artesanos de Chiavari. Palabras clave: Historia, instrumentos científicos, museos de ciencia. PACS: 01.40.ek, 01.50.My, 01.50.Pa, 01.65.+g ISSN 1870-9095 I. HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION A. The historical background An almost unknown aspect of the history of Italian Physics consists of the technological and instructional activities carried out in the little Italian town of Chiavari in the northwestern part of Italy, throughout the nineteenth century and until the second half of the twentieth century. In this little town appear as reasonable the possibility of some research activity, because there were two institutions having Physics laboratories with suitable structures to some measurements and research [1]. This is not a surprising fact when you consider that at the time of its foundation (1897), the Italian Physical Society counted among its members an absolute majority of non-university teachers and that "Il Nuovo Cimento" up to 1932, often published experimental work carried out in non-university Institutions. This phenomenon was supported by the lack of "assistants" at the University: this availability was gradually reduced to two laws that made the role of "assistant" incompatible with that of "teacher in secondary school” [2]. After these laws no exchanges or interactions between Universities and Schools happened. As pointed out in a previous paper [3], Chiavari is a little coastal town placed between the east Ligurian sea and the mountains of the hinterland, so, despite from the relatively short distance from Genoa (about 40 km), the territory was impervious to communications by land and made the town culturally isolated until the arrival of the railroad in 1869, much later than other major Italian railway lines. This little town of about 12000 inhabitants at the end of the XIX century, had various high schools particularly in the area of Technical Education and a meteo-seismic observatory connected to the Italian seismic network [3, 4]. The historical Institutions in Chiavari devoted to the Science Lat. Am. J. Phys. Educ. Vol. 7, No. 2, June 2013 196 http://www.lajpe.org