[26] Report of the 13th Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1843, 1844, p. xi ff. I have found no other reference to this instrument. Considerable attention was given to the thermometer, however, for Wheatstone proposed to send it aloft in a balloon for the measurement of temperatures at high altitudes. A small clock caused a vertical rack to ascend and descend once in six minutes. The rack carried a platinum wire which moved within the thermometer over 28 degrees. From a galvanic battery and a galvanometer on the ground two insulated copper wires were to extend to the balloon, one connected to the mercury and the other to the clock frame. The deflection of the galvanometer was to be timed with a second clock on the ground. (Professor Wheatstone, "Report on the Electro-Magnetic Meteorological Register," Mechanics' Magazine, London, 1843, vol. 39, p. 204).
[27] In 1662 Hooke had proposed the use of a bimetallic pendulum for the temperature compensation of clocks. Thermometers on this principle were described to the Royal Society in 1748 and in 1760 (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1748, vol. 45, p. 128; 1760, vol. 51, p. 823). Some systems used a bimetallic thermometer in the sun and a mercurial instrument in the shade.
[28] This instrument has been persistently associated with Sir Samuel Morland (1625-1695). For example, A. Sprung of the Deutsche Seewarte described his own balance-barometer as a "Wagebarograph nach Samuel Morland" (in L. Loewenherz, Bericht über die wissenschaftlichen Instrumente auf der Berliner Gewerbeausstellung im Jahre 1879, Berlin, 1880, p. 230ff). Sprat (op. cit. footnote 10, p. 313) reported that Wren had proposed "balances to shew the weight of the air by their spontaneous inclination." This must, therefore, be Wren's invention, unless he got it from Morland, who does not seem to have published anything about the barometer but only to have described some ideas to a friend. But Morland's was probably the inclined and not the balance barometer. (See under "barometer" in Charles Hutton, Mathematical and Philosophical Dictionary, London, 1796, vol. 1; also J. K. Fischer, Physikalisches Wörterbuch, Göttingen, 1798).
[29] Leibniz, in several letters—beginning with one to Denys Papin on June 21, 1697—proposed the making of a barometer on the model of a bellows. Of subsequent versions of such a barometer, that of Vidi (described by Poggendorff, Annalen der Physik und Chemie, 1848, Band 73, p. 620) is generally regarded as the first practical aneroid (see also Gerland and Traumüller, op. cit. footnote 1, pp. 239, 323).
[30] T. R. Robinson, "Modification of Dr. Whewell's Anemometer for Measuring the Velocity of the Wind," Report of the 16th Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1846, 1847, pt. 2, p. 111.
[31] Abbe, op. cit. (footnote 19), pp. 263-264.
[32] Because of its superior accuracy to the aneroid barograph, Marvin's barometer was in use through the 1940's. See R. N. Covert, "Meteorological Instruments and Apparatus Employed by the United States Weather Bureau," Journal of the Optical Society of America, 1925, vol. 10, p. 322.
[33] Both of Richard's instruments (described in Bulletin Mensuel de la Société d'Encouragement pour l'Industrie Nationale, November 1882, ser. 3, vol. 9, pp. 531-543) were in use at Kew by 1885 and at the U.S. Weather Bureau by 1888. The firm of Richard Freres claimed in 1889 to have made 7,000 registering instruments, of which the majority were probably thermographs and barographs. At that time, certainly no other maker had made more than a small fraction of this number of self-registering instruments. The origin of Richard's thermograph seems to have been the "elastic manometer" described by E. Bourdon in 1851 (Bulletin de la Société d'Encouragement pour l'Industrie Nationale, 1851, no. 562, p. 197). While attempting to restore a flattened still-pipe, Bourdon had discovered the property of tubes to change shape under fluid pressure. The instrument he developed in consequence became the standard steam pressure gauge.
[34] A few of these instruments, such as the Marvin barograph, survived for some time because of their superior accuracy. Even as museum pieces, only a few exist today.
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