Mercury Barometer
date: label: date made
content: 1861-1870
name: label: maker
content: Wilder, Charles
notes: label: Description
content: Lum Woodruff, a resident of Ann Arbor, Michigan, who reported weather observations to the Smithsonian Institution, patented a portable barometer that proved to be extremely popular. Its key feature was a divided cistern so constructed that, when the tube was full of mercury, the lower portion of the cistern would be as well, and it could be shut off from the now empty upper portion.
label: Description
content: Charles Wilder converted an old factory in Peterborough, New Hampshire, into a barometer shop in the fall of 1861, and began touting the virtues of Woodruff’s instrument. It was, he said, “simple, durable, accurate, perfectly portable, and very cheap,” and also “a very beautiful and ornamental piece of furniture.” It promised farmers a five percent savings on all their crops. For scientific men it offered “superior accuracy.” And for “gentlemen of leisure and cultivation” it offered a “never ending and constantly varying study of interest.”
label: Description
content: This example was owned by John King, a Cincinnati physician interested in meteorology. It seems to be a "No. 1, Ornamental" style instrument that sold, originally, for $15. The silvered face at the top is marked “CHARLES WILDER / PETERBORO / N.H.” and “WOODRUFF’S / PAT. / JUNE 6, 1860.” The barometer scale extends from 27 to 31 inches of mercury, and is graduated into tenths and read by vernier to hundredths. The mercury-in-glass thermometer, also at the tope, extends from 0 to 110 degrees Fahrenheit.
label: Description
content: Ref.: Lum Woodworth, “Barometer,” U.S. Patent 25,626 (1860).
label: Description
content: Wilder’s advertisements in <i>American Agriculturist</i> 21 (1862): 191, and in <i>The Bankers’ Magazine</i> 12 (June 1863): 40.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: New Hampshire, Peterborough
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Physical Sciences
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content: Barometers
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content: Measuring & Mapping
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Mrs. Hallie Stephens Caine
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PH.314608
label: accession number
content: 87851
label: catalog number
content: 314608
objectType: label: Object Name
content: barometer, mercury
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 37 in x 4 5/8 in x 1 7/8 in; 93.98 cm x 11.7475 cm x 4.7625 cm