2008-08-24 » In 1659, Robert Boyle commissioned the construction of an air pump, then described as a "pneumatic engine", which is known today as a vacuum pump. The air pump was invented by Otto von Guericke in 1650, though its cost deterred most contemporary scientists from constructing the apparatus. Boyle, the son [...]
2008-08-24 » An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump is a 1768 oil-on-canvas painting by Joseph Wright of Derby, part of a series of candlelit scenes that Wright painted during the 1760s. The Air Pump departed from previous painting conventions by depicting a scientific subject in the reverential manner formerly [...]