A Failure, an Icon or Beyond: the Cloud Chamber of the University of Padua

The history of cloud chambers, their technical evolution and the possible interpretations of their developments and uses have been widely studied from the mid-twentieth century. In this paper, we will focus on the cloud chamber housed at the Giovanni Poleni Museum of the History of Physics, in Padua. This device was built in the late 1930s for Bruno Rossi, who was then professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Padua. We will examine this instrument’s biography and discuss the possible ways to interpret this cloud chamber today, in particular in a museum context.