The Museo degli Strumenti di Fisica (museum of physics apparatus) is home to collections that belong to the Physics Faculty at Pisa University. A whole section is dedicated solely to scientific instruments, many of them centuries old, as the exhibits range from the late 1600s to present day.
The instruments are divided by typology (mechanical, astronomical, electromagnetic, chronometric, optic, acoustic, utensils and others), and are illustrated with explanatory notes to describe their origins, their purpose, their vital statistics, the restoration process that they underwent, a few historical details and a brief biography.
The museum is especially noteworthy for the inventions of Antonio Pacinotti that it preserves, including the first ever direct-current dynamo and his electromagnetic traction machines.
The museum collection also includes important historical archives, including the documents of the Fondo Pacinotti, the Pacinotti Archive, the Fermi-Persico Archive and the Riccardo Felici Archive. They are currently kept in the Mathematics, Physics and Computer Science Library, which belongs to the Ateneo Library network.
