By Steve Scarpa, Associate Director of Marketing and Communications
Paola Bertucci would not recommend the process by which she researched her book “In the Land of Marvels: Science, Fabricated Realities, and Industrial Espionage in the Age of the Grand Tour” to any of her graduate students.
She made countless tours to dusty Parisian archives, flipping through folders, looking for the documents that would crack open the story of the 18th century French scientist who acted as a secret consultant for the French state on the Italian silk industry. “Usually, you know pretty much what kind of sources you need and where they are. In this case, I didn’t. That’s why (this research) remained a side project,” she said.
That “side project” ended up winning a prestigious award.
Bertucci’s book received the 2025 Paul Bunge Prize, considered the most important award in the history of scientific instruments worldwide. “Bertucci skillfully links scientific debates about the legitimacy of experimental results with public controversies about the legitimacy of electrical healing methods in the 18th century,” according to the announcement.
“The recipients of this prize have been people whose work I studied or people I studied with who I deeply admire. So, it is wonderful to join this list,” said Bertucci, Professor of History and History of Medicine and the Curator of the History of Science and Technology at the Peabody.
Paola Bertucci
The book tells the story of Abbe Nollet, a French scientist living in the 18th century. Nollet traveled to Italy in 1749, ostensibly to research the “miraculous” therapeutic properties of electricity. However, according to unpublished records, Nollet was on a secret mission from the French government to look at automated silk production, a lucrative industry at the time.
Early in Bertucci’s academic career, an older professor gave her Nollet’s travel manuscript. “When I first laid eyes on Nollet’s travel diary, I did not expect that this document would change the course of my research as dramatically as it did,” Bertucci wrote in the introduction to her book.
As interesting as Nollet’s manuscript was, with its depictions of Italy and its musings on the nascent technology of electricity, she was struck by how much he wrote about silk production. The manuscript itself would not be enough to fully explore this unique eddy of European history. Delving into the French state archives would be important, she thought. “The archives are so rich with documents,” she said.
A random folder opened moments before the archive closed contained the proof she needed that Nollet was working with the French government.
Nollet wasn’t just motivated by the riches of the silk trade. Claims were being made throughout Italy that electricity was responsible for healing chronic illness. He was skeptical and wanted to investigate.
The rise of interest in electricity was not motivated by scientific inquiry, at least initially, Bertucci explained. Electric technicians, who were really performers who were adept with the nascent electric machinery, put on entertaining displays for the public. They often claimed that electricity cured various ailments. Academic interest in the technology followed. “All these layers that for us today are very separate – the cultural, the scientific, the experimental, the literary – overlapped at that time,” she said.
The research also yielded interesting insights with modern day implications. “What I found was that Nollet and his Italian rivals put into print versions of their experiments or their work that are not consistent with what we find in other unpublished documents,” Bertucci said.
They embellished the stories of what they discovered, giving international audiences a very different perspective than was happening on the ground. “It was interesting to me to think about how print gave the possibility of fabricating events or the personas of the experimenters themselves,” she said.
While writing this book during the pandemic, Bertucci couldn’t help but see the connection. “It’s not just an artifact of the digital world that this happens, the fabrication of false news,” Bertucci said. In fact, in the early modern period through the 18th century, state authorities were very aware of false news, and they were concerned about the impact on public opinion from false information.”
Bertucci’s next project will take her back into an archive, but this time a little closer to home. She is currently co-editing a book of essays along with Alexi Baker, Collections Manager of the History of Science and Technology. “The collection is a starting point for historical explorations,” Bertucci said. Each scholarly essay is inspired by an object in the Peabody’s History of Science and Technology collection. She expects the book will be completed in 2026.