Atmospheric pressure and the mercury barometer
Presión atmosférica y barómetro de mercurio
- Date
- 1643 · confidence high
- Place
- Florence, Italy
- Credited to
- Evangelista Torricelli
- People
- 👤 Evangelista Torricelli1608–1647
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
A column of mercury about 76 cm high is supported in an inverted tube because air has weight and exerts pressure; above it lies the first sustained vacuum. 'We live at the bottom of an ocean of air.'
Gasparo Berti carried out a similar experiment with water in Rome (c. 1640).
What it led to
- Quantitative meteorology
- Physics of the vacuum and pneumatics
- Boyle's law
- Atmospheric steam engine
Built on
- Galileo's water-pump problem
- Rejection of horror vacui
Made possible
- Mercury barometer1643
- Vacuum pump (air pump)1650
- Barometric altimeter