a. [f. the name of Torricelli, an Italian physicist (1608–47) + -AN.] Of or belonging to Torricelli.
Torricellian experiment, that by which, in 1643, Torricelli proved that the column of mercury in an inverted closed tube is supported by the pressure of the atmosphere on the mercury in the vessel, and that the height of the column corresponds exactly to the atmospheric pressure. Torricellian tube, early name for the tube of the mercurial barometer. Torricellian vacuum, the vacuum above the mercurial column in the barometer, produced by filling the tube with mercury and then inverting it in a cup of mercury.
1660. Boyle, New Exp. Phys. Mech., xvii. 123. We are unwilling to examine any further the Inferences wont to be made from the Torricellian Experiment. Ibid. (1663), Usef. Exp. Nat. Philos., I. iv. 69. Nor did it appear that by repeated Suctions … it could at all be rais’d above the seven and twenty Digits at which it us’d to subsist in the Torrecellian Experiment De Vacuo.
a. 1680. Butler, Rem. (1759), I. 162. Or measuring of Air upon Parnassus With Cylinders of Torricellian Glasses.
1682. H. More, Annot. Glanvill’s Lux O., 130. The Quicksilver in a Torricellian Tube will sink deeper in an higher or clearer Air.
1729. Pennsylvania Gaz., 7 June, 2/1. For removing the Torrecellian Tube to a more elevated Place, where the incumbent Column of Air is shorter; a proportionably shorter Column of Mercury is sustained.
1812. Sir H. Davy, Chem. Philos., 97. Even the best Torricellian vacuum must contain elastic matter.
1812–6. Playfair, Nat. Phil. (1819), I. 243. The weight of air is known from the Torricellian experiment, or that of the barometer.
1835. Penny Cycl., III. 483/2. It is a Torricellian barometer.
