STUDIO.nano Resonances Lecture—Invented pasts, past inventions: When technological myths survive historical evidence
Building 12, Room 0168, 60 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA
Join STUDIO.nano for the next Resonances Lecture! Paola Bertucci Professor, Department of History and the History of Science and Medicine Program, Yale University Date: October 26, 2026 Time: 4:30 PM — 5:30 PM ET Location: Building 12, Room 0168 Register Following the talk, Professor Bertucci will be joined in conversation with Professor Craig Carter, Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT. ABSTRACT Why do stories about technological inventions survive even when historical evidence proves them wrong? This talk explores the persistence of fabricated pasts through the remarkable case of Flavio Gioia, the alleged medieval inventor of the navigational compass. Created by a sixteenth-century translation mistake, Gioia never existed, yet he lived a remarkably long life on the printed page and beyond. For centuries, he figured in histories of technology and accounts of the making of the modern world. Following Gioia across texts, images, and monuments, the talk examines what the persistence of technological myths reveals about the role of inventions in narratives of modernity. BIOGRAPHY Paola Bertucci is a professor in the Department of History and in the History of…