Boyle's Air Pump Experimental Apparatus

Timeline

1. 1658–1659Oxford · EnglandInspired by Otto von Guericke's vacuum pump, Robert Boyle commissioned his young assistant Robert Hooke in Oxford to improve the design, producing a piston-driven air pump fitted with a sealed glass sphere container that could reduce internal pressure to near-vacuum levels.
2. 1659–1660Oxford · EnglandBoyle and Hooke used the air pump to conduct a series of experiments showing that sound cannot travel through a vacuum, flames are extinguished in a vacuum, and animals cannot survive in a vacuum, and precisely measured changes in gas volume at different pressures, providing key experimental data for Boyle's law.
3. 1660Oxford · EnglandIn 1660 Boyle published New Experiments Physico-Mechanical, Touching the Spring of the Air, and Its Effects, fully reporting 43 experiments performed with the air pump, establishing the core claim that air has elasticity, becoming a classic model of modern experimental philosophy, and sparking his famous dispute with Thomas Hobbes over the nature of the vacuum.