Guericke, Otto

, counsellor to the elector of Brandenbourg, and burgomaster of Magdebourg, was born in 1602, and died in 1686 at Hambourg. He was oae of the greatest philosophers of his time. It was Guericke that invented the air-pump; the two brass hemispheres, which being applied to each other, and the air exhausted, sixteen horses were not able to draw them asunder; the marrnouset of glass which descended in a tube in rainy weather, and rose again on the return of serene weather. This last machine fell into disuse on the invention of the barometer, especially after Huygens and Amontous gave theirs to the world. Guericke made use of his marmouset to foretell storms from whence he was looked upon as a sorcerer by the people and the thunder having one day fallen upon his house, and shivered to pieces several machines which he had employed in his | exporixnents, they asserted that it was a punishment from heaven. Guericke was author of several works in natural philosophy, the principal of which was his “Experimenta Magdeburgica,” 1672, folio, which contains his experiments on a vacuum. ¹