Weather Glass
notes: label: Description
content: The simple storm glass, also known as a chemical weather glass, consists of a sealed glass vessel containing a salt in solution, so designed that the state of crystallization was said to indicate some aspect of the weather. A torn paper label on the back of this example provides instructions for use.
label: Description
content: The inventor of the storm glass is unknown, but the form was widely known in Europe and the United States by the middle years of the nineteenth century. A British scientist named Charles Tomlinson conducted experiments and found that “the storm-glass acts as a rude kind of thermoscope, inferior, for most purposes of observation, to the thermometer.”
label: Description
content: Ref: Charles Tomlinson, “An Experimental Examination of the so-called Storm-glass,” <i>The Philosophical Magazine</i> 26 (1863): 93-109.
label: Description
content: Anita McConnell and Philip Collins, “Will the True Originator of the Storm Glass Please Own Up,” <i>Ambix</i> 53 (2013): 67–75
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Physical Sciences
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PH.322299
label: catalog number
content: 322299
label: accession number
content: 247190
objectType: label: Object Name
content: weather glass
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 26 cm x 12.7 cm x 15.3 cm; 10 1/4 in x 5 in x 6 in
label: Measurements
content: overall: 10 in x 5 in x 6 in; 25.4 cm x 12.7 cm x 15.24 cm