Patent
protection was given in 1651 to Jeromy Buck for melting iron,
lead, tin, copper, brass, and other metals with coal without
burning charcoal, for fourteen years.
Dutchman Stevinus showed that the pressure at the bottom of a
column of liquid is proportional to the height of the column, and
not to its bulk, about 1634. He also studied oblique forces, and
the balancing of such that could bring about "stable equilibrium".
Evangelista Torricelli, an Italian student of Galileo, discovered
in 1643 that any fluid will be supported at a definite height,
according to its relative weight, as compared with air. He
realized that a mercury column, 30 inches in height, in a long
glass tube inverted in a cup of mercury, was being supported by
air pressure exerted on the mercury in the cup. When he observed
that this height changed with the weather, he had invented the
mercury barometer. His creation of a vacuum, above the mercury in
the tube, astonished philosophers, who had thought that nature
abhored a vacuum and would prevent it.
Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician, physicist, and religious
philosopher, constructed a calculator in 1644 to assist his
father, who was involved in local administration, in tax
computations. Around 1646, he proved his law that pressure applied
to a confined liquid is transmitted undiminished through the
liquid in all directions regardless of the area to which the
pressure is applied.
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