Technology-embedding Instruments and Performative Goals: the case of the fully-automatized cloud chamber by the Officine Galileo in Florence

The paper presents a study of a cloud chamber produced for teaching purposes by the Company “Officine Galileo” in Florence from 1948 to the late 1960s and designed by the Italian physicist Carlo Ballario. The instrument is built according to a modification introduced by C.T.R. Wilson in 1933 to his original cloud chamber of 1911 and, at the same time, shows a proper identity, as fully-automatized apparatus. In the paper – on the basis of a close study of the instrument, an analysis of the correspondence between the designer and the Company and published and unpublished documents – I will argue that the fully-automatized character of the Italian cloud chamber can be understood in terms of a possible, specific performative goal for which the instrument was meant for. In the last part, the analysis of the circulation of the instruments provides insights on the market of Scientific Instruments in Italy and in the United States after the WWII.