Torricelli invents the barometer. In 1643 the Italian physicist Evangelista Torricelli (1608-1647) constructed a tube that was sealed at the top, around a metre long, and filled with mercury. He then upended it in a bowl of mercury, and observed that the resulting column fluctuated with atmospheric pressure. This artwork is from a series of illustrated French encyclopedia volumes, published by the Epinal printing firm in the late 19th and early 20th century. The series was called 'Serie encyclopedique des lecons de choses illustrees' (Encyclopedic series of object lessons illustrated), and this example is from a volume published in around 1900.