Bert Bolle Barometer - History - The Netherlands

The Netherlands

The Dutch writer and barometer specialist Bert Bolle (born 1947) designed and built the water barometer in 1985 as the focal point of the Barometer Museum, which he ran with his wife Ethne in the 18th-century country house ‘Rustenhoven’ at Maartensdijk in central Netherlands. In 1978 Bolle wrote a book titled Barometers, which was translated into German and English. In 1983 he wrote a scientific sequel to his first book and developed some modifications of the mercury barometer system.

In 1985 Bolle and his wife set up a barometer museum in their country house. Their aim was to create a collection based on loans of barometers from private collectors and museums in the Netherlands. To obtain these loans, a massive publicity campaign was undertaken. Bolle wanted something to make the museum's launch spectacular, an appliance that would be impressive and definitive which would serve as the centre point of the Barometer Museum. He decided to design and make a water barometer, paying homage to the 17th-century scientists, such as Evangelista Torricelli and Gasparo Berti, who produced some of the first and most crucial vacuum experiments, and created the first water barometers alongside their houses between 1640 and 1660. Bolle's old three-story country house had ample height, the highest point of which was the roof of the main hall: a leaded glass cupola. The apex of the hall was over 12 metres from the hall floor; a perfect environment for such an enormous instrument.

Bolle decided to make a construction of four borosilicate glass (e.g. Pyrex) pipes of 90 mm diameter. He fitted the pipes to a nine-metre-long solid oak plank, which was one metre wide at the base. For the top three metres of the barometer, a 25 mm thick polymethylmethacrylate (e.g. Perspex) sheet was used. The reservoir chamber was also made of borosilicate glass; with a diameter of 600 mm the capacity of this reservoir was enough to hold 150 litres of water, which was necessary to make the barometer work properly. The first successful test runs took place in November and December 1985.

Bolle designed the top end of the water barometer to be connected to a rotary vane pump, which was governed by timer relays. At ten-minute intervals, the pump evacuated the air from the glass pipe, causing the 12-metre-tall instrument to fill with 55 litres of water within one minute. Visitors were invited to climb the stairs and follow the water to the top, where it started to boil spontaneously (see below). The huge register plate had two scales: centimeters of water and millibar. Water vapour pressure depresses the reading of water barometers, and the magnitude of this error increases with temperature. Thus, a rule of thumb was provided to make a correction for temperature. After a reading period of five minutes, air was admitted to the top area of the pipe. Within a couple of minutes all the water would return to the cistern downstairs, after which the ten-minute pump cycle would start again. Visitors were able to watch a real living instrument the whole day.

The instrument proved to be a massive drawcard and appeared several times in the media during the subsequent twelve-year period during which Bolle's Barometer Museum operated. In 1998 the museum was closed down.