A Treatise on Meteorological Instruments: Explanatory of Their Scientific Principles, Method of Construction, and Practical UtilityNegretti, Enrico Angelo Lodovico
Science
A Treatise on Meteorological Instruments: Explanatory of Their Scientific Principles, Method of Construction, and Practical Utility
Negretti, Enrico Angelo Lodovico
Meteorological instruments; Meteorology; Scientific apparatus and instruments
=45. McNeild's Long Range Barometer.=--A barometer designed by a gentleman
named McNeild is on a directly opposite principle to the one just
described. The tube is made to float on the mercury in the cistern. It is
filled with mercury, inverted in the usual manner, then allowed to float,
being held vertically by glass friction points or guides. By this
contrivance, the ordinary range of the barometer is greatly increased. One
inch rise or fall in the standard barometer may be represented by four or
five inches in this instrument, so that it shows small variations in
atmospheric pressure very distinctly. As the mercury falls in the tube
with a decrease of pressure, the surface of the mercury in the cistern
rises, and the floating tube rises also, which causes an additional
descent in the column, as shown by fixed graduations on the tube. With an
increase of pressure, some mercury will leave the cistern and rise in the
tube, while the tube itself will fall, and so cause an additional ascent
of mercury. This barometer is identical in principle with King's Barograph
(see p. 34).
The construction of Howson's and McNeild's Barometers has been assigned to
Messrs. Negretti and Zambra. These instruments are usually made for
domestic purposes with a scale of from three to five, and for public use
from five to eight times the scale of the ordinary standard. Their
sensitiveness is consequently increased in an equal proportion, and they
have the additional advantage of not being affected by differences of
level in the cistern. However, these novelties have not been sufficiently
tried to determine their practical value for strictly scientific
purposes; but as weather-glasses, for showing minute changes, they are
superior to the common barometer.
=46. The Water-glass Barometer.=--If a Florence flask, having a long neck,
have a small quantity of water poured into it, and then be inverted and so
supported that the open end dips into a vessel containing water, a small
column of water will be confined in the neck of the bottle, the pressure
of which, upon the surface of the exposed water, will be equal to the
difference between the atmospheric pressure and the elasticity of the
confined air in the body of the bottle. As the pressure of the atmosphere
varies, this column will alter in height. But the elasticity of the
confined air is also subject to variations, owing to changes of
temperature. It follows, then, that the oscillations of the column are
dependent on alterations of temperature and atmospheric pressure. Such an
arrangement has been called "the Water-glass Barometer," and bears about
the same relative value to the mercurial barometer, as an exponent of
weather changes, that a cat-gut hygrometer bears to a thermometric
hygrometer, as an indicator of relative moisture.
47. SYMPIESOMETER.
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