text: The theorem of Torricelli was employed by many succeeding writers, but particularly by Edme Mariotte (1620–1684), whose Traité du mouvement des eaux, published after his death in the year 1686, is founded on a great variety of well-conducted experiments on the motion of fluids, performed at Versailles and Chantilly. In the discussion of some points he committed considerable mistakes. Others he treated very superficially, and in none of his experiments apparently did he attend to the diminution of efflux arising from the contraction of the liquid vein, when the orifice is merely a perforation in a thin plate; but he appears to have been the first who attempted to ascribe the discrepancy between theory and experiment to the retardation of the water's velocity through friction. His contemporary Domenico Guglielmini (1655–1710), who was inspector of the rivers and canals at Bologna, had ascribed this diminution of velocity in rivers to transverse motions arising from inequalities in their bottom. But as Mariotte observed similar obstructions even in glass pipes where no transverse currents could exist, the cause assigned by Guglielmini seemed destitute of foundation. The French philosopher, therefore, regarded these obstructions as the effects of friction. He supposed that the filaments of water which graze along the sides of the pipe lose a portion of their velocity; that the contiguous filaments, having on this account a greater velocity, rub upon the former, and suffer a diminution of their celerity; and that the other filaments are affected with similar retardations proportional to their distance from the axis of the pipe. In this way the medium velocity of the current may be diminished, and consequently the quantity of water discharged in a given time must, from the effects of friction, be considerably less than that which is computed from theory.