Note 133 — Chapter XXI
Reading edition
A very ingenious little instrument, called the Aneroid Barometer, has been lately invented in France; which, at the same time that it forms an exact and very portable weather-glass, in the common acceptation of that term, may be employed with considerable accuracy in ascertaining differences of level. Although not to be compared, as an instrument of precision, with the ordinary mercurial barometer, it is infinitely more portable, and gives with promptitude and accuracy small differences of level.
A friend of the author’s has recently tested it in the latter respect on some of our railways, and found that observations made with it carefully will give, on a line of 200 miles in extent, the relative levels of the different stations within a few feet. The observations can be made in a couple of minutes. The gentleman in question writes to us, that he considers the Aneroid Barometer will prove a very useful instrument to the geological and the botanical traveller.
See, for a description of this instrument, a pamphlet recently published at 84, Strand, by Mr. E. J. Dent, on the Construction and Uses of the Aneroid Barometer. London, 1849.