Abstract:

The "storm glass" or "chemical weather glass" is a slender glass tube, eight to ten inches long, containing a liquid composed of a mixture of nitre and a compound described variously as sal ammoniac or Roman alum, dissolved in water, and added to camphor dissolved in ethanol. From time to time, feathery or star-like crystals appear. Some people claimed that these phenomena indicated coming weather, and others that they resulted from changes in temperature, light, wind direction, or atmospheric electricity. In the later nineteenth century such storm glasses were the subject of considerable publicity generated in England by Robert Fitzroy, then Director of the Meteorological Office of the Board of Trade, and the London instrument makers Negretti & Zambra. Storm glasses had, however, been known in France since at least the 1780s, possibly as a consequence of experimentation by industrial chemists.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1179/174582306X93200