A barometer is a scientific instrument used in meteorology to

measure atmospheric pressure. Pressure tendency can forecast short term changes in
the weather. Numerous measurements of air pressure are used within surface weather
analysis to help find surface troughs, high pressure systems and frontal boundaries.
Barometers and pressure altimeters (the most basic and common type of
altimeter) are essentially the same instrument, but used for different purposes. An
altimeter is intended to be transported from place to place matching the atmospheric
pressure to the corresponding altitude, while a barometer is kept stationary and
measures subtle pressure changes caused by weather. The main exception to this
is ships at sea, which can use a barometer because their elevation does not change.
The first apparatus generally accepted as a barometer was that set up in
Florence in 1644 by Evangelista Torricelli (16081647), a mathematician and physicist.
Torricelli filled a glass tube with mercury, sealed it at one end, and inverted it with its
open end in a dish of mercury. The level always fell a short way down the tube, then
settled at a height of about thirty inches. He concluded correctly that the mercury
column was sustained by the weight of the air pressing on the open surface of mercury,
and further experiments convinced him that the space above the mercury in the tube
was a vacuum. He noted that the level rose and fell with changing temperature, but he
was unable to use his apparatus to measure variations in the weight of the atmosphere
because he had not foreseen that temperature would affect the level of the mercury.

By 1648, the barometer was serving the three purposes that it continued to serve
thereafter: as an apparatus for testing the laws of physics, as an instrument for
measuring altitude, and as a weather monitor and, later, prognosticator. The
words baroscope and barometer, meaning 'instrument for measuring weight', first used
by Robert Boyle in the early 1660s, were soon adopted into the Latin, French, German,
and Italian languages.

Although Evangelista Torricelli is universally credited with inventing the

barometer in1643, historical documentation also suggests Gasparo Berti, an Italian
mathematician and astronomer, unintentionally built a water barometer sometime
between 1640 and 1643.

Two common types are the aneroid barometer and the mercurial barometer (invented
first). Evangelista Torricelli invented the first barometer, known as the "Torricelli's tube"