The Magdeburg hemispheres are a pair of large copper hemispheres designed by Otto von Guericke, the mayor of Magdeburg and a scientist, to demonstrate the power of air pressure. After he had invented an air pump, Guericke joined two hemispheres together and pumped out the air from inside them, so that the pressure of the surrounding atmosphere held them firmly together. In a famous public demonstration in front of the Emperor Ferdinand III and the Imperial Diet in Regensburg in 1654, teams of horses pulling in opposite directions were unable to separate them. The experiment provided powerful evidence that a vacuum could exist, which was disputed at the time, and it influenced later work on the physics of gases by scientists such as Robert Boyle.
Before and after
- from 1 June 1652 to 2 June 1652Battle of Batih
- 1653Founding of Lowell
- 1653Founding of Leominster
- c. 1653The Taj Mahal is completed
- 1654Magdeburg hemispheres
- from 1654 to 1660Anglo-Spanish War
- 1654Founding of Northampton
- 1654Treaty of Pereyaslav
- from 1654 to 1667Russo-Polish War
More in Science & technology
- 15 February 1564Birth of Galileo Galilei
- 25 December 1642Birth of Isaac Newton
- October 1684Leibniz publishes the first paper on calculus
- 15 April 1707Birth of Leonhard Euler
- 20 March 1727Death of Isaac Newton
- 28 August 1749Birth of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The era
This moment belongs to the Early modern world (1500 CE to 1760 CE), voyages, printing and new ideas. You can also browse everything in the 17th century.