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Types
and Origins of Antique Barometers |
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STICK
BAROMETERS |
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| Until the last quarter
of the 18th Century, virtually all English Barometers
were Stick Barometers
In their construction and design,
Barometers closely reflected the prevailing furniture style.
Walnut gave way to mahogany around 1740 as the preferred material,
and the styles, usually individualistic, became more classically
simple, architectural pediments appearing from c1770. Not many Stick
Barometers from the pre- 1770s remain.
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 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. |
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| Stick Barometer styles
changed in a number of ways as the 19th Century progressed
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Register plates were made of ivory
[later bone] or porcelain instead of silvered brass.
Lettering style was more ornate.
Architectural pediments gave way to the ‘ogee’.
Rosewood and walnut became fashionable from around 1860, and oak
from around 1880.
The final quarter of the Century
also saw the introduction of the popular Admiral Fitzroy Barometer,
a style which is still reproduced today. |
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WHEEL
BAROMETERS |
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| The popularity of the
mercury Wheel or colloquially banjo Barometer is due entirely to
the activities of Italian immigrants, who settled in London from
around 1780 producing wheel barometers with a variety of
decorative marquetry inlays and elaborately engraved dials.
Increased demand for wheel barometers
at the beginning of the 19th Century culminated in the
ubiquitous ‘Sheraton style’ Wheel Barometer with simpler, stereotyped
decoration and usually bearing a provincial address. [Antique
Barometer] |
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| Throughout
the 19th Century increasing demand for Barometers generated
a growing use of 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 fashionable.
From the 1880s oak cases were most in demand. Larger, 10 and
12 inch dials went into the more spacious hallways of the growing
middle classes.
Perhaps the most significant technical
development of the period was the introduction of the Aneroid Barometer,
in the 1850s, which had all but eliminated its mercury competitor
by the close of the Century. |
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| The very earliest
– 17th Century – Barometers were in fact primitive altimeters
used to determine the height of mountains. Technical developments
in the early 18th and 19th Century enabled more sophisticated instruments
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 the essential Laboratory adjunct for a hundred
years from the 1860s.
A large variety of Barometer types
were devised to give necessarily accurate weather forecasting data.
In particular Marine Barometers were increasingly employed
from the early 19th Century; including the "sympiesometer"
which was popular in the 2nd/3rd quarters of the 19th Century. Other
types were introduced for specific locations and purposes including
Farmers’ Barometers and ‘Fishery or Sea Coast’ Barometers
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| 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 domestic pieces.
By the end of the 19th
Century their price and inherent portability had 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. |
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| The "Recording
Barometer" or Barograph was first commercially produced, albeit
in very small numbers, in the 1870s, harnessing the movement
of mercury in a standard Torricellian column.
It was not until the 1880s, however,
that the Aneroid mechanism became powerful enough to enable the
data to be recorded, initially, in the main, in the form of Weather
Stations in public buildings.
The familiar Barograph, with glazed
hood, was introduced in the 1890s, and has been produced in essentially
the same form up to the present day. However, the earliest
models are generally of superior quality. |
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