Barometer Handbook

With the exception of trained meteorological crews, barometers in the past were used at sea primarily to learn if the pressure was going up or down, and whether it was doing this rapidly or slowly. And from this we made an educated guess of a likely consequence, usually in conjunction with other observations. Outside of professional marine use, little effort was made to know the true pressure for several reasons. We did not know what to do with it if we had it, and more often we could not get it if we wanted it, because most barometers were not calibrated. This has changed. We now have many valuable applications of accurate pressure, and we also have affordable ways to get it, and we have convenient ways to prove our instruments work properly. The main goal of this book is to show how all this comes about, and to give more insight into this fascinating, venerable instrument that has been with us for 150 years. Another goal is to introduce users to the new breed of electronic de