For two centuries the barometer has been an indispensable laboratory instrument. Yet, despite its revolutionary influence on science, W. E. Knowles Middleton here offers the first complete history of the barometer as a scientific tool. Middleton relies on research from Western European documents and manuscripts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He begins his story with a pre-history of the barometer, the Torricellian experiment, the subsequent experiments and controversies in the 1640s, and the barometric ...
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For two centuries the barometer has been an indispensable laboratory instrument. Yet, despite its revolutionary influence on science, W. E. Knowles Middleton here offers the first complete history of the barometer as a scientific tool. Middleton relies on research from Western European documents and manuscripts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He begins his story with a pre-history of the barometer, the Torricellian experiment, the subsequent experiments and controversies in the 1640s, and the barometric experiments during the remainder of the century. Later chapters are concerned with the mercury barometer as a scientific instrument, discussing the efforts to expand the scale to render the instrument portable, and to attain greater accuracy. These chapters follow accounts of mercury barographs, the history of the corrections to the barometer, the history of the mercury barometer in North America, and the luminescence that appears when a barometer is moved in the dark. The final chapters discuss barometers other than those using the weight of a column of mercury. A large number of the more interesting barometers seen by the author in his extensive travels appears in the appendix. Nearly 200 figures and diagrams depict the wide variety of barometers studied by the author over his long career at the Smithsonian Institution.
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Add this copy of The History of the Barometer to cart. $18.90, Sold by Crossroad Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Eau Claire, WI, UNITED STATES, published 1964 by The John Hopkins Press.
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Seller's Description:
0801804612. Ex-Library copy; with typical markings. Library label on front board and on spine tail. Light bumping, rubbing to spine extremities. Corners are bumped. A bit of light soiling to binding. Pages clean, but for library markings. No dustjacket.; SCH18D; 489 pages; Ex-Library.
College text from the golden age of tech books. Well written as a book on this topic could be, with language that describes the instrument in its many guises without being too dry. Very happy to add it to my instrumentation and controls library.
