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Updated: May 25, 2025
The pressure exerted by the atmosphere was but little understood at that time, but Torricelli's discovery aided materially in solving the mystery. The whole class of similar phenomena of air pressure, which had been held in the trammel of long-established but false doctrines, was now reduced to one simple law, and the door to a solution of a host of unsolved problems thrown open.
"Accursed Formica!" cried Pasquale, springing up and shaking his clenched fist towards the stage. Torricelli's and Cavalcanti's grave looks of disapproval, however, constrained him to silence and quietness.
"This generosity of Torricelli," says Playfair, "was, perhaps, rarer than his genius: there are more who might have discovered the suspension of mercury in the barometer than who would have been willing to part with the honor of the discovery to a master or a friend." Torricelli's discovery was made in 1643, less than two years after the death of his master.
From this it was deduced that the pressure of air on the surface of the mercury in the cup forced it up the tube to the height Of 30 inches, and this was so because the weight of a column of air from the cup to the top of the atmosphere was only equal to that of a column of mercury of the same base and 30 inches high. Torricelli's experiment can be easily repeated.
That such verbal hocus-pocus should be received as science will one day be regarded as evidence of the low state of intelligence in the nineteenth century, just as we amuse ourselves with the phraseology about Nature's abhorrence of a vacuum, wherewith Torricelli's compatriots were satisfied to explain the rise of water in a pump.
That such verbal hocus-pocus should be received as science will one day be regarded as evidence of the low state of intelligence in the nineteenth century, just as we amuse ourselves with the phraseology about Nature's abhorrence of a vacuum, wherewith Torricelli's compatriots were satisfied to explain the rise of water in a pump.
It had long been suspected and believed that the density of the atmosphere varies at certain times. That the air is sometimes "heavy" and at other times "light" is apparent to the senses without scientific apparatus for demonstration. It is evident, then, that Torricelli's column of mercury should rise and fall just in proportion to the lightness or heaviness of the air.
There is reason to believe, however, that while Roberval's discovery was made before Torricelli's, the latter reached his conclusions independently. In recent chapters we have seen science come forward with tremendous strides. A new era is obviously at hand.
That such verbal hocus-pocus should be received as science will one day be regarded as evidence of the low state of intelligence in the nineteenth century, just as we amuse ourselves with the phraseology about Nature's abhorrence of a vacuum, wherewith Torricelli's compatriots were satisfied to explain the rise of water in a pump.
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