Comprehensive enough meteorological data prompted some attempts at dealing with theory of the general circulation of the atmosphere, initially by the otherwise obscure Ralph Bohun (d.1716) and later astronomer Edmond Halley (1656-1742). Halley had the right idea about the trade winds of the tropics arising from upward flow of equatorial air with north and south air flow induced to replace it, but he could not explain the easterly orientation of this air flow.
The seventeenth century had initialized the empirical and instrumental inspection of the atmosphere. Galilei Galileo's (1564-1642) profound experimental acumen had included questions dealing with atmospheric pressure and credit for the first glass-bulb thermometer. England's Francis Bacon (1561-1626) with his dedication to inductive philosophy used his own fascination with the wind as the one completed subject for his method. Rene Descartes (1596-1650), who introduced the corpuscular theory of matter and motion, applied it to investigating the phenomena of the atmosphere, particularly the rainbow.
Groundwork in researching the nature of gases was one hallmark of the seventeenth century. And important correlation in methodology between laboratory experimentation and instrumentation was followed by meteorological applications probing the parameters of the atmosphere. Galileo's student Evangelista Torricelli (1608-1647) invented the glass tube mercury barometer (there were also water barometers) for measuring atmospheric pressure.
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