Il carteggio fra Pietro Conti e Quintino Sella 1874-1878 - The correspondence between Pietro Conti and Quintino Sella 1874-1878

The correspondence between the military engineer Pietro Conti (1827-1878) and Quintino Sella (1827-1884) covers four years. The main topic is Conti’s works Studi sull’attrito and Sulla resistenza alla flessione della pietra serena that he presented to the Accademia dei Lincei in 1874 and 1875 to be published. In the first paper he tried to invalidate Coulomb’s friction’s law; in the second one he studied the deformation of a specific type of stone in function of the weight put on it. The correspondence shows how much Conti was unable to follow the proper process for a publication causing difficulties to the review board. His scarce knowledge of mathematics prevents him to create a proper theory for his results.