Antiques A to Z - A Pocket Handbook for Collectors and Dealers (Paperback)

ANTIQUES a pocket handbook for collectors and dealers with sections on Weapons and Armour -- CONTENTS -- Barometers Clocks Enamels Furniture Furniture Woods, Veneers, Marquetry and Inlay Glass Pewter, Copper, Brass Pottery and Porcelain Sheffield Plate Silver Weapons, Firearms Weapons, Edged, and Armour LLOSCOPE. Name given to an instrument invented and patented in 1861 by an American, H. A. Clum. In Wonderful Inventions 1882, it is described as, An apparatus . . . named because its special function is the viewing or indicating of storms. It combines the construction of a barometer, having a cistern containing 70 lb. of mercury and a central mercurial column 2 inches in diameter. In this column rests a float or buoy supporting large cylinders or air chambers. . . . It was claimed that these cylinders were so sensitive to atmospheric changes that they showed variations not observable in the ordmary barometer. ANEROID B AROMETER T . h is type of barometer is said to have been invented by a Frenchman, Lucien Vidie, about 1845. The principle of the instrument, described briefly, is the weight of a column of air which, in a common barometer, acts on the mercury in the aneroid, presses on a small metal box from which nearly all the air is extracted, and the hand or pointer is connected to this box by delicately adjusted mechanism when the atmospheric pressure on the vacuum box is lessened, a spring acting on levers turns the hand to the left when the pressure increases, the spring causes the hand to turn to the right. BANJO SHAPE. The style of case similar to the outline of a banjo used with the wheel barometer of the later 18th century and after. It was widely popular and large numbers stillexist in perfect working order. See illustration above. BAROGRAPH An . automatic instrument with which an ink-fed style pen registers the varying atmospheric pressures on paper stretched round a drum-in other words a self-recording barometer. BAROMETER, ORIGI OP N . The discovery of the barometer was the outcome of a young Ithans refusing to accept the doctrine that nature abhors a vacuum. In the early 17th century, some Italian Late Georgian barometer Late Georgian barometer Georgian mural barornamented in the Adam with a small clock ometer in Chippenmanner dale, carved case Table barometer in the form of a Corinthian column. c. 1805 Mirror in wide, lacquered frame with Mural barometer diagonal barometer and thermometer. in mahogany case. Early 18th century New York, c. 1810 Barometer, Origin of-Correct Pc sition a BAROMETERS pum - makers found that cod S not be raised toth aat gwreaatteerr height than about 32 feet by a suction pump. They consulted Gdeo, the famous astrologer, who pacified them by explaining natures abhorence of a vacuum and then set his pupil Torricelli the task of finding the real solution. Torricelli felt he could explain the phenomenon if he could prove the atmosphere had weight and that the weight would exercise a pressure equal to a column of water 32 feet high. To test this, he decided to use mercury in place of water, as, mercury being 133 times heavier than water would allow an experiment on a much smaller scale. He contended that if the atmosphere was the counterpoise to a 32 feet column of water, then it should counterpoise a column of approximately 28 inches of mercury and this was the basis of L S ex periment. Taking a tube about 36 inches long and inchinside diameter, he sealed one end and filled the tube with mercury...