Thermometer and barometer

Thermometers and barometers were two of the instruments usually found in physics cabinets. They use the dilatation of liquids to measure temperature and atmospheric pressure. Antoine Assier-Perricat and André Bourbon, both instrument makers, were renowned for the precision of their apparatuses and the quality of their blown-glass tubes. In the early 1770s they mounted an alcohol thermometer and a mercury barometer as a single piece, on whose giltwood frame both the temperature and atmospheric pressure in a room could be read, so noting the conditions in which scientists conducted their experiments. The inscription above the tubes tells us that the instrument was approved by the Académie Royale des Sciences.