Timeline of the Measurement of Pressure

By Jonghyeon

  • Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

    Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
    • Birth : February 15, 1564
    • Contribution : he developed the suction pump. He used air to draw underground water up a column, similar to how a syringe draws water. He was perplexed as to why there was a limit to the height water could be raised.
    • Date of Contribution : 1630
    • Age at the time : 66

  • Evangelista Torricelli (1608-1647)

    Evangelista Torricelli (1608-1647)
    • Birth : October 15, 1608
    • Contribution : He developed the 1st barometer. He carried on Galileo's work by determining the limit to the height Galileo's pump could draw water was due to atmospheric pressure. He invented a closed-end tube filled with mercury that,in turn,was suspended in a shallow dish filled with liquid mercury. The height of the column of mercury in the tube(in mmHg)was equal to the atm pressure acting on the mercury in pan
    • Date of Contribution : 1643
    • Age at the time : 35
  • Period: to

    Otto von Guericke (1602-1686)

    • Birth : November 20, 1602
    • Contribution : He made a pump that could create a vacuum so strong that a team of 16horses could not pull two metal hemispheres apart. He reasoned that the hemispheres were held together by the mechanical force of the atmospheric pressure rather than the vacuum.
    • Date of Contribution : 1643-1645
    • Age at the time : 41-43
    • picture of him : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Otto_von_Guericke_portrait.jpg

  • Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

    Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
    • Birth : June 19, 1623
    • Contribution : He used Torricelli's "barometer" and travelled up and down a mountain in southern France. He discovered that the pressure of the atmosphere increased as he moved down the mountain. Sometime later the SI unit of pressure, the Pascal, was named after him.
    • Date of Contribution : 1648
    • Age at the time : 25

  • Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695)

    Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695)
    • Birth : April 14, 1629
    • Contribution : He developed the manometer to study the elastic forces in gases
    • Date of Contribution : 1661
    • Age at the time : 32

  • John Dalton (1766-1844)

    John Dalton (1766-1844)
    • Birth : September 6, 1766
    • Contribution : He stated that in a mixture of gases the total pressure is equal to the sum of the pressure of each gas, as if it were in a container alone. The pressure exerted by each gas is called its partial pressure.
    • Date of Contribution : 1801
    • Age at the time : 35

  • Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (1778-1850)

    Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (1778-1850)
    • Birth : December 6, 1778
    • Contribution : He observed the law of combining volumes. He noticed that, for example, two volumes of hydrogen combined with one volume of owygen to form two volumes of water.
    • Date of Contribution : 1808
    • Age at the time : 30

  • Amadeo Avogadro (1776-1856)

    Amadeo Avogadro (1776-1856)
    • Birth : August 9, 1776
    • Contribution : He suggested, from Gay-Lussac's experiments conducted three years earlier, that the pressure in a container is directly proportional to the number of particles in that container (known as Avogadro's Hypothesis). This can be illustrated by blowing up a balloon, ball, or tire : the more air is added the larger the container becomes due to increased pressure.
    • Date of Contribution : 1811
    • Age at the time : 35