page_title: Scientific Revolution
section_title: Other devices
hierarchical_section_title: Scientific Revolution / New mechanical devices / Other devices
caption_attribution_description: Drawing of Robert Boyle's air pump
context_page_description: The Scientific Revolution was a series of events that marked the emergence of modern science during the early modern period, when developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology and chemistry transformed the views of society about nature. The Scientific Revolution took place in Europe towards the end of the Renaissance period and continued through the late 18th century, influencing the intellectual social movement known as the Enlightenment. While its dates are debated, the publication in 1543 of Nicolaus Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium is often cited as marking the beginning of the Scientific Revolution.
  The concept of a scientific revolution taking place over an extended period emerged in the eighteenth century in the work of Jean Sylvain Bailly, who saw a two-stage process of sweeping away the old and establishing the new. The beginning of the Scientific Revolution, the 'Scientific Renaissance', was focused on the recovery of the knowledge of the ancients; this is generally considered to have ended in 1632 with publication of Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.
context_section_description: The invention of the vacuum pump paved the way for the experiments of Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke into the nature of vacuum and atmospheric pressure. The first such device was made by Otto von Guericke in 1654. It consisted of a piston and an air gun cylinder with flaps that could suck the air from any vessel that it was connected to. In 1657, he pumped the air out of two conjoined hemispheres and demonstrated that a team of sixteen horses were incapable of pulling it apart. The air pump construction was greatly improved by Robert Hooke in 1658.
  Evangelista Torricelli (1607–1647) was best known for his invention of the mercury barometer. The motivation for the invention was to improve on the suction pumps that were used to raise water out of the mines. Torricelli constructed a sealed tube filled with mercury, set vertically into a basin of the same substance. The column of mercury fell downwards, leaving a Torricellian vacuum above.
caption: Air pump built by Robert Boyle. Many new instruments were devised in this period, which greatly aided in the expansion of scientific knowledge.
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