Listed in the 2008 Australian Traveller's Top Hundred world unique attractions in Australia!
The Bert Bolle Barometer in The Barometer Tower. Access is FREE!
This huge instrument is unique in the world and was donated by Bert and Ethne Bolle to the community of Denmark in 2007. Bert and Ethne Bolle retired in 1999, left the Netherlands and migrated to Western Australia, where they found their beautiful spot in the pristine environment of Denmark. Bert is a writer and Ethne an artist painter.
During the twelve years before their migration, they ran the Barometer Museum in their 18th century country house at Maartensdijk in the Netherlands. The main attraction in their museum was a giant water barometer in the main hall. The twelve metre high instrument is officially recognized as the largest barometer in the world by The International Guinness Book of Records.
Bert, who had designed and built the instrument himself, didn’t want to part with his creation, and so the barometer made the journey to Down Under. It came back to life in the Barometer Tower of the new Denmark Visitor Centre, and is named The Bert Bolle Barometer.
A brief history
The exact date of discovery of the barometer and the name of the inventor are both subjects for debate. The reason for this is that, in its original form, the barometer was not invented as a weather forecasting instrument. Initially it was developed as a scientific instrument just to prove the existence of a vacuum, and at a later stage for following changes in the weight of the air. In other words, it was not invented with a predetermined, single aim in mind in the way that radio and television were deliberately developed to receive electronic signals.
In the 17th century people began to question the long-accepted ideas that a vacuum or air free space was impossible. The all-powerful church had dictated that idea for centuries. Just why was this so - was it indeed so? As is often the case where important discoveries are made, a simple event from the daily goings on of the time gave the clue to a breakthrough. Round about 1635 an elaborate series of fountains was being installed in the palace gardens at Florence in Italy. Water had to be pumped up from a very deep well. A suction pump was installed, but to everybody’s consternation it was found that the water rose no further than about eighteen Florentine yards - about thirty-three feet or ten metres. Although they did not realize it at the time, a vacuum had been created and no matter how hard they pumped, the water stayed in the well. The famous scientist Galileo, who had already attracted a lot of adverse criticism because of his new-fangled ideas, was approached for advice.
Galileo's way of thinking was too strongly influenced by the old teachings of Aristotle for him to hit upon an explanation involving a vacuum. The dogmatic teachings were so firmly ingrained into his way of thinking that it never occurred to him that the water in the pipe was simply ‘held’ there by the force of the air pressing down on the water outside the pipe. He did go so far as to state that air had mass, but he did not make further deductions. All the same he did let other researchers know of the problem, like Gaspar Berti in Rome, and in 1639 serious experiments were carried out using an appliance about 35 feet (11 metres) high filled with water to try to create a vacuum.
Galileo’s successor to the post of court scientist to the Duke of Tuscany was Evangelista Torricelli who having found the notes of his predecessor and teacher went on to conduct further experiments. It seems that his initial trials involved water and that his aim was not only to create a vacuum but to prove that air pressure was responsible for supporting the water column. Torricelli was the first to try to “construct an instrument which showed changes in the air, sometimes heavier and coarser, at other times lighter and finer”. In 1644 Torricelli discovered that he could carry out his experiments more conveniently with mercury rather than with water, although water was still used by other scientists for some decades. Blaise Pascal erected a water barometer in Rouen in France in 1646 and Otto von Guericke, the mayor of Magdeburg in Germany installed one alongside his house round about 1654. In England scientists like Robert Hooke and Robert Boyle experimented with similar instruments in the sixties of the 17th century.
After 1670 the complicated water barometer had given way to the mercury tube. There were a few water barometers made by scientists during the next centuries, but these instruments were rare. About 1880 there was a water barometer in London, but since then the instrument seemed to have become extinct, until in 1985 Bert Bolle decided to design and build one for the Barometer Museum he intended to found with his wife Ethne.
Bert made a website on his Water Barometer. Please surf to www.bertbolle.com and read more about the history of this fascinating instrument.
Contact: Bert prefers a quiet lifestyle, so if you have a question, please write to him rather than using the phone, if you can. Bert's postal address: RMB 1021 Denmark WA 6333. Or send him an E-mail through his website.
