Vacuum pump (air pump)
Bomba de vacío
- Date
- 1650 · confidence high
- Place
- Magdeburg, Germany
- Credited to
- Otto von Guericke; improved by Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke (1659)
- People
- 👤 Otto von Guericke1602–1686👤 Robert Hooke1635–1703
- Field
- Tools
What it is
A piston pump with valves that drew air from a sealed vessel, producing a vacuum at will. With it Guericke showed that sound does not travel in a vacuum and that candles will not burn there, and Boyle formulated his gas law.
Boyle and Hooke built a more practical version at Oxford in 1659 (the Machina Boyleana).
What it led to
- Boyle's law and the physics of gases
- The public experimental culture of the Royal Society (Boyle, Hooke)
- The concept of atmospheric pressure as a motive force
- The physiology of respiration
Built on
- Mercury barometer1643
- Atmospheric pressure and the mercury barometer1643
- Piston water pump
- turned piston and cylinder
Made possible
- Fire engine with hose1518 (Platner) / 1672 (Van der Heyden) / 1721 (Newsham)
- Magdeburg hemispheres1654
- Friction electrostatic generator1663 (Guericke) / 1705 (Hauksbee)
- Steam digester (pressure cooker)1679
- Diving bell and diving suit1691 (campana) / c. 1715 (escafandra de Lethbridge)
- Newcomen atmospheric engine1712
- Sprengel pump1865
- Crookes radiometer1873
- Practical incandescent light bulb1879
- X-rays1895
- Mass spectrometer1912–1919
- Papin's digester and atmospheric engine
- Incandescent light bulb (vacuum, 19th century)
- Electrical discharge tubes