History
Barometric light was first observed in 1675 by the French astronomer Jean Picard: "Towards the year 1676, Monsieur Picard was transporting his barometer from the Observatory to Port Saint Michel during the night, he noticed a light in a part of the tube where the mercury was moving; this phenomenon having surprised him, he immediately reported it to the Sçavans,..." The Swiss mathematician Johann Bernoulli studied the phenomenon while teaching at Groningen, the Netherlands, and in 1700 he demonstrated the phenomenon to the French Academy. After learning of the phenomenon from Bernoulli, the Englishman Francis Hauksbee investigated the subject extensively. Hauksbee showed that the full vacuum was not essential to the phenomenon, for the same glow was apparent when mercury was shaken with air only partially rarefied, and that even without using the barometric tube, bulbs containing low-pressure gases could be made to glow via externally applied static electricity. The phenomenon was also studied by contemporaries of Hauksbee, including the Frenchman Pierre Polinière and a French mathematician, Gabriel-Philippe de la Hire, and subsequently by many others.
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