World Pumps traces the development of vacuum and the uses to which it has been put in industry
HistorJcal developments
Until the mid-17th Century, the existence of a vacuum in nature had been a philosophical question, revolving around ancient arguments, which regarded a vacuum as; "abhorrent to nature". A contemporary of Galileo, Evangelista Torricelli (1608 -1647), is recognized as the first man to create a sustained vacuum with his invention of the barometer. The development of the vacuum pump, however, resulted from work done in hydraulics and pneumatics, notably by Blaise Pascal (1623 -1662), the inventor of the hydraulic press.
In Holland, Christaan Huygens (1629 -1695) was an accomplished vacuum research specialist, who constructed some of the first practical vacuum pumps. The Irish chemist and natural philosopher Robert Boyle (1627 -1691), is remembered for his pioneering experiments on the properties of gases, specifically his air pump experiments with Robert Hooke, which led to the establishment of Boyle's law. It is the German physicist and engineer, Otto von Guericke (1602 -1686), however, who is recognized as the inventor of the first air pump. Most schoolboys will be familiar with the Magdeburg hemisphere experiments, where teams of horses failed to pull apart two brass hemispheres that had been evacuated by his air pumps. ~ i~ ~ ,," .... ~:i ":" : ~ k ,'' /~ i ΒΈ Click on ? for video clip Click on 1" for video clip Otto von Guericke, physicist and engineer, was one of the pioneers of vacuum technology.