Barometer

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This special barometer without mercury, is also known as a sympiesometer. The sympiesometer was patented by the Edinburgh instrument maker Alexander Adie (1775-1858) in 1818. This example was produced by the same firm, Adie & Son, probably in around 1880. It still contains its original tube which is numbered 2310, as is the instrument.

Adie's sympiesometer is a glass tube filled with coloured almond oil, with a gas bulb filled with hydrogen at the top. A thermometer registers the temperature and the sliding silvered-brass scale of pressures slides against a fixed scale of temperatures. The instrument is signed by Adie & Son of Edinburgh, the name of whose business changed in 1880. It is numbered 2310.

The sympiesometer was developed especially for use at sea, where the motion of the waves caused mercury in an ordinary barometer to behave like a hammer, shattering the glass. The sympiesometer was superseded by the invention of the aneroid barometer in the mid 19th century.

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• Online ID: 000-180-001-210-C
• Image Rights Holder: National Museums Scotland
• Project: National Museums Scotland Part 2
  Project description   View all records in project
• Ref: National Museums Scotland  
• Date: Around 1880
  
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  • A. Adie,'Description of the Patent Sympiesometer, or New Air Barometer', Edinburgh Philosophical Journal 1 (1819), pp 54-60; T.N. Clarke et al., Brass & Glass: Scientific Instrument Making Workshops in Scotland (Edinburgh 1989), pp 35-7 
  • W.E.K. Middleton, The History of the Barometer (Baltimore, 1964), pp 378-81 
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