. Bulletin. Science. temperature. The utility of the instrument was im- mediately recognized by physicists (not by chemists, oddly enough), and much ingenuity was expended on its perfection over a 50-year period, in northern Europe as well as in Italy. The conversion of this open, air-expansion thermoscope into the modern thermometer was accomplished by the Florentine Accademia del Cimento about 1660. Galileo also inspired the barometer, through his speculations on the vacuum, which, in 1643, led his disciple Torricelli to experiments proving the limita- tion to nature's horror of a vacuum. To
. Bulletin. Science. temperature. The utility of the instrument was im- mediately recognized by physicists (not by chemists, oddly enough), and much ingenuity was expended on its perfection over a 50-year period, in northern Europe as well as in Italy. The conversion of this open, air-expansion thermoscope into the modern thermometer was accomplished by the Florentine Accademia del Cimento about 1660. Galileo also inspired the barometer, through his speculations on the vacuum, which, in 1643, led his disciple Torricelli to experiments proving the limita- tion to nature's horror of a vacuum. Torricelli's ap- paratus, unlike Galileo's thermoscope, represented the barometer in essentially its classical form. In his earliest experiments, Torricelli observed that the air tended to become "thicker and thinner"; as a conse- quence, we find the barometer in use (with the ther- mometer) for meteorological observation as early as 1649.' The meetings of the Accademia terminated in 1667, but the 5-year-old Royal Society of London had al- ready become as fruitful a source of new instruments, largely through the abilities of its demonstrator, Robert Hooke, whose task it was to entertain and instruct the members with experiments. In the course of devising these experiments Hooke became perhaps the most prolific instrument inventor of all time. He seems to have invented the first wind pressure gauge, as an aid to seamen, and he improved the bathometer, hygrometer, hydrometer, and barometer, as well as instruments not directly involved in measurement such as the vacuuni pump and sea-water sampling devices. As in Florence, these instruments were immediately brought to bear on the observation of nature. It does not appear, however, that we would be justified in concluding that the rise of scientific mete- orology was inspired by the invention of instruments, for meteorology had begun to free itself of the tradi- tional weather-lore and demonology early in the 17 th > On e
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