Mercury barometer
Barómetro de mercurio
- Date
- 1643 · confidence high
- Place
- Florence, Italy
- Credited to
- Evangelista Torricelli (with Vincenzo Viviani)
- People
- 👤 Evangelista Torricelli1608–1647
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
A tube of mercury inverted in a basin, its 76 cm column held up by the weight of the air, leaving the first sustained vacuum above it. It demonstrated atmospheric pressure and the existence of the vacuum.
Gasparo Berti carried out a similar experiment with water in Rome (c. 1640) without interpreting it as pressure.
What it led to
- Pascal's experiments on the Puy de Dôme (1648) and the experimental method
- The vacuum pump and Boyle's pneumatics
- Meteorology and weather forecasting
- The concept of atmospheric pressure, which explains the atmospheric engine
Built on
- Glassblowingc. 50 BCE
- Atmospheric pressure and the mercury barometer1643
- Suction well pumps (10 m limit observed by Galileo)
Made possible
- Hygrometerc. 1480 (Leonardo) / 1664 (Hooke) / 1783 (Saussure)
- Vacuum pump (air pump)1650
- Magdeburg hemispheres1654
- Steam digester (pressure cooker)1679
- Newcomen atmospheric engine1712
- Hypsometer: altitude from the boiling point of water1801-1802
- Aneroid1844
- Scientific hurricane forecasting1875
- Barometric altimeter