VI 



ROBERT BOYLE 



I 627- I 69 I 



Robert Boyle, fourteenth child of the Earl of Cork, was born 

 January 2^, 162'j, in M mister, Ireland. He went to Eton, studied 

 under the rector of Stalbridge, and later traveled on the Continent 

 under private tutors. On the death of his father in 1644, he inherited 

 the manor at Stalbridge. At the age of eighteen he became associ- 

 ated with the English scientific investigators at Oxford zvho later 

 founded the Royal Society, and engaged actively in physical experi- 

 ments and researches. The greatest of his achievements was his 

 discovery of the law of the compressibility of gases. He died De- 

 cember JO, i6pi. 



THE DISCOVERY OF THE LAW OF THE 

 COMPRESSIBILITY OF GASES * 



We took a long glass tube, which, by a dexterous hand and the help 

 of a lamp, was in such a manner crooked at the bottom, that the part 

 turned up was almost parallel to the rest of the tube, and the orifice 

 of this shorter leg of the syphon (if I may so call the whole in- 

 strument) being hermetically sealed, the length of it was divided into 

 inches (each of which was subdivided into eight parts) by a straight 

 list of paper, which, containing those divisions, was carefully pasted 

 all along it. Then putting in as much quicksilver as served to fill 

 the arch or bended part of the syphon, that the mercury standing in a 

 level might reach in one leg to the bottom of the divided paper, and 

 just to the same height or horizontal line in the other, we took care, 

 by frequently inclining the tube, so that the air might freely pass 



* From Thorpe, Essays on Historical Chemistry. 



49 



