Vincentio Casciorolo

Vincentio Casciorolo , also Vinzentius Casciorolus, was a shoemaker and alchemist who lived in Bologna and worked at the beginning of the 17th century. In 1602 he discovered the phosphorescence of barium sulphide (Litheophosphorus, Lapis Soleris, Bolognese light stone), which he obtained from glowing barium , which occurred locally as a mineral, with coal. The phenomenon was later also known with white phosphorus (discovered by Hennig Brand 1669), where it is more of a chemiluminescence . Casciorolo is thus the discoverer of phosphorescence. At that time Casciorolo had already given up his profession and dealt with alchemy. He showed the discovery to the alchemist Scipio Begatello in Bologna and the mathematics professor J. Maginus, who made it known among scholars in Europe. In Bologna the manufacturing process was kept secret (because of the glow and the sulfur content one saw an alchemical application as a sol for making gold, for example). The discovery was already described in a book by the French chemist Pierre Potier (Poterius), who lived in Bologna (1622).

literature

• Entry in Winfried Pötsch, Annelore Fischer, Wolfgang Müller: Lexicon of important chemists, Harri Deutsch 1989

Remarks

1. ^ Johann Beckmann Contributions to the History of Inventions , 5 volumes, Leipzig, Göttingen, 1780–1785.