Early
English flame mahogany stick barometer by Edward Nairne
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Price - Inquire.
The
flame mahogany of this beautifully proportioned barometer
is accented with light maple on the beveled borders.
Below the swan neck pediment with brass finial a lockable
door opens to the silvered barometer scale engraved
“Nairne London”.
The
left side of the scale ranges from ‘Very Dry’
to ‘Stormy’ and on the right the barometric
pressure is indicated with a venire slide to record
the pressure at a particular time.
The
longer lower door opens to a silvered scale with mercurial
tube to indicate the temperature 0° - 120° with engraved
indications “Blood Heat” at 98, “Temperate”
at 55, and “Freezing” at 32 degrees. The
barometer tube with boxwood cistern is concealed within
the trunk of the barometer with traveling screw at
the bottom.
Circa
- 1770
Dimensions:
40”(100cm) high, 4 3/4”(12cm) wide
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Click
images below to view large detailed photographs
of this early barometer. |
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Edward
Nairne (1726-1806) was an optical and mathematical
instrument maker who published various works on astronomical,
navigational, and pneumatic instruments. He was apprenticed
to the optician Matthew Loft in 1741 and established
his own business at 20 Cornhill in London after Loft's
death in 1748.
In
1774 he took his apprentice Thomas Blunt into partnership,
a relationship that lasted until 1793 when Blunt opened
his own shop at 22 Cornhill. Since
Nairne and Blunt worked together but sold under their
own names, it is hard to precisely date individual
instruments, but examples signed “Nairne London”
should most logically be dated pre-1774.
Edward
Nairne constructed the first successful marine barometer
by constricting the glass tube between the cistern
and register plate. The instrument was suspended from
gimbals mounted within a freestanding frame to provide
additional stability. Nairne’s first marine barometer
was sent on James Cook’s second voyage to the South
Pacific.
A
similar barometer to this one is listed in an account
book dated 1768 at Trinity House, Newcastle.
Nairne patented several electrical machines, including
an electrostatic generator consisting of a glass cylinder
mounted on glass insulators; the device can supply
either positive or negative electricity, and was intended
for medicinal use.
Nairne
was a regular contributor to the Philosophical Transactions
of the Royal Society of London, and was elected a
fellow of that institution in 1776. He enjoyed an
extensive international reputation, and was in correspondence
with Benjamin Franklin for whom he made a set of magnets
and a telescope around 1758. Also on Franklin's recommendation,
he was asked to supply instruments for the fire-damaged
collection at Harvard.
