Alan Walker

Stick Barometers

Georgian [up to c1830]

Until the last quarter of the 18th Century, virtually all Barometers were of the Stick variety, with the upper section displaying a scale - in inches - alongside the visible mercury column.

In their construction and design, Barometer cases closely reflected the prevailing furniture style. Walnut gave way to mahogany around 1740 as the preferred material, and the styles, initially individualistic, became more classically simple and standardised, arched tops and architectural pediments appearing from c1760. Not many Barometers from the pre- 1760's survive.

From around 1780, there was an increasing harmonisation into a small number of barometer styles, especially in pediments, engraving style and cistern covers. Most were produced, in small batches, by a group of London based 'Optical and Mathematical' instrument makers.

The latter Georgian period saw an explosion of Barometer manufacture by Italian immigrants in workshops in 'Little Italy', Holborn, London. The design of their Stick Barometers was, from the start, almost exclusively restricted to one familiar format, increasingly popular with the burgeoning middle-class.

Victorian [c1840 - 1900]

Stick Barometer styles changed in a number of ways as the 19th Century progressed:

Register plates wereincreasingly made of fashionable ivory [later bone] or porcelain instead of silvered brass.
Lettering style became more ornate.
Architectural pediments gave way to the 'ogee'.
Rosewood and walnut became more common from around 1860, and oak from around 1880, reflecting the popularity of the 'Arts and Crafts' movement in its campaign for the use of indgienous woods.

The final quarter of the Century also saw the introduction of the popular 'Admiral Fitzroy Barometer', a style which continued to be reproduced throughout the 20th Century.

Wheel Barometers

Georgian [c1780 - 1830]

The popularity of the mercury Wheel - or colloquially 'banjo' - Barometer is due entirely to the activities of Italian immigrant manufacturers, who settled in London, in growing numbers, from around 1780, producing instruments with a variety of decorative marquetry inlays and elaborately engraved dials.

Increased demand at the beginning of the 19th Century culminated in the ubiquitous 'Sheraton style' Wheel Barometer with simpler, stereotyped [shell and flower-head] decoration and usually bearing the provincial address of the retailer, the barometer having been made usually in London.

Victorian [c1840 - 1900]

Throughout the 19th Century, increasing demand for Barometers generated a growing use of newly developed mass-production techniques. Machine made parts, thinner veneers and standardised designs became the norm by mid-Century.

Mahogany continued to be the favoured wood until around 1860 when rosewood and walnut became widely fashionable. From the 1880s oak cases were most in demand in parallel with the 'Arts and Crafts' movement's encouragement oflocal woods. Larger, 10 and 12 inch dials went into the more spacious hallways of the growing middle classes.

The most significant technical development of the period was the introduction of the Aneroid Barometer,from the 1850s, which had all but eliminated its mercury competitor by the close of the Century.

Marine and Scientific Mercury Barometers

The very earliest - 17th Century - mercury Barometers were in fact primitive altimeters used to determine the height of mountains. Technical developments in the early 18th and 19th Century enabled such instruments, albeit more sophisticated, to be employed in experiments in the upper Atmosphere ['Balloonists Barometers'] Similar Barometers were used by surveyors on every continent ['Mountain Barometers']

'Fortin Barometers' with visible reservoirs - were essential pieces of Laboratory equipment for a hundred years from the 1860s.

A large variety of Barometer types were devised to give accurate weather forecasting data. In particular Marine Barometers [including 'Sympiesometers'] were increasingly employed from the early 19th Century; and other types were introduced for specific locations, e.g. 'Farmers Barometers' and 'Storm' or 'Fishery or Sea Coast' Barometers [sited at every significant port around the British Isles].

Aneroid Barometers

First introduced at the London Great Exhibition in 1851, Aneroid Barometers, [literally meaning 'without liquid'], quickly became an attractive alternative to the traditional Mercury Barometer.

Being unconstrained as to size or shape they were produced in a wide variety of forms, from the pocket-sized traveller's Barometer to large ornately decorated domestic pieces.

By the end of the 19th Century their competitive price and inherent portability had largely destroyed the market for the Mercury Barometer. Even in areas requiring precise measurements, such as the marine environment, they established a strong presence before the end of the Victorian era.