Letter: a crystal shipment and a family inheritance
A memorandum to 'Your Excellency', closing with notes on air resistance and the motion of falling bodies.
This densely written sheet is a memorandum addressed to 'Your Excellency', reporting that Ridolpho Martini has conveyed to Florence a load of rock crystal and other carving stones — more than seven-eighths crystal, including a broken beryl a braccio long — and noting that the customs muleteers can give further information. A second paragraph raises the writer's affairs with his brother ser Giuliano over their uncle's inheritance. At the foot, unrelated physics notes argue that a calculator errs in reckoning air resistance because a faster body condenses the air ahead of it more than a slower one. The whole page is covered in faded cursive with staining and holes; the transcription supplies the full text along with an editorial note.
On this page
Ridolpho Martini's shipment of crystal and stones
The writer reports a load brought to Florence of rock crystal and a few other stones for carving; the crystals make up more than 7/8 of the load, among them a beryl one braccio long and 1/5 braccio thick, as clean as possible, which broke across its length. Further details are to come from the muleteers of the customs house.
The inheritance of the writer's uncle
A reminder concerning the affair with ser Giuliano, the writer's brother and head of the other brothers, who had offered to settle matters among them — namely their uncle's inheritance — and to press it to the dispatch set out in the letter he had sent.
Air resistance and a body's descent
The note argues that one who calculates errs in reckoning the air's resistance by failing to consider that the faster moving body condenses the air before it more than the slower one. It also observes that if the cord of a moving body felt part of the weight of the excess, that excess would be retarded in its descent.