Barometers Realm

Before us is an Imperial Russian Aneroid Barometer — an elegant parlour instrument made around 1880. It was produced in Paris, in the workshop of the celebrated French clockmaker Antoine Rédier, yet the dial bears the name of its St. Petersburg retailer: the firm of J.E. Mielck, one of the most renowned optical houses of the Russian Empire, which supplied precision instruments to the studies, country estates and government offices of the capital. The instrument was conceived for double duty: thanks to its tiny brass feet it stands confidently on a desk, while a brass suspension ring allows it to be hung on a wall — the owner was free to choose whether it would adorn a writing desk or the pier between two windows.

The case is round, of drum form, made of polished brass — a warm and noble material. At the front the case is closed by a slender bezel holding a flat mineral glass; over the glass sits a brass trend-indicator hand, governed by a milled knob set on the outside. This hand does not show the pressure on its own — it is set by hand, marking the current position of the measuring needle so that, after a while, one can see in which direction the pressure has moved. The device is simple, but it is precisely this that turns the barometer from an object of contemplation into a working tool for the weather-watcher.

The dial is made of dense card and consists of two discs, held together by a reflective ring of silvered brass. The main disc carries the barometric scale, calibrated in London inches of mercury over a range from 27 to 31 inches, with each inch divided into twentieths — a division fine enough to register the subtle fluctuations of the atmosphere. Over it is simply laid a second disc bearing a detailed textual weather indication; on its inner side it has a thin brass rim, and it conceals the original French weather terms of the main dial, and with them the famous Rédier logo. In other words, before us is a French instrument dressed up for a Russian buyer: beneath the Russian “face” of the dial slumbers its French foundation. On the visible surface stand the retailer’s name — J.E. Mielck, the inscription St Pétersbourg, and, rendered in cursive script, the signature “Барометръ Анероидъ” (Aneroid Barometer).

The Russian weather legends are written in pre-reform orthography. By this is meant the system of Russian writing that existed before the reform of 1917–1918: it preserved a number of letters and spellings that later disappeared from everyday Russian script — among them the letter “ѣ” (yat) and a broader use of the final hard sign “ъ.” The inscriptions on the scale read “БУРЯ” (Storm), “В. ДОЖДЬ” (Much Rain), “ДОЖДЬ” (Rain), “ПЕРЕМѢННО” (Change), “ЯСНО” (Fair), “Х. ПОГОДА” (Cold) and “В. СУШЬ” (Very Dry). The abbreviations decode as follows: “В. ДОЖДЬ” — “великій дождь” (great rain), that is, heavy, abundant rain; “Х. ПОГОДА” — “холодная погода” (cold weather); “В. СУШЬ” — “великая сушь” (great dry), that is, intense dryness, prolonged dry weather, close to the modern notion of drought. All the weather markings are set in a large, high-contrast antiqua serif type — of the kind characteristic of the commercial and publishing graphics of the second half of the nineteenth century. The letters have narrow proportions and a marked contrast between thick and thin strokes, which lends the scale a solemn and somewhat official character, befitting an instrument that aspires to a place in a substantial interior.

The instrument is driven by the readily recognisable Rédier rack-and-pinion movement. At its heart lies an early aneroid capsule of copper: its upper and lower membranes, with their characteristic concentric corrugation, are held against collapse by an internal steel coil spring, which is what resists the pressure of the atmosphere. The slightest change in pressure causes the capsule to contract or expand a little; this microscopic movement is transmitted through a system of linkages and brass levers to the hand arbor. The arbor carries a pinion that engages the toothed rack, and through this engagement the barely perceptible travel of the membranes is turned into a quite discernible rotation of the slender blued-steel needle. The movement is built on a steel plate with a brass bridge, on which the assembly number 8 is stamped.

All in all, before us is a coherent and characteristic example of the Franco-Russian instrument trade of the last quarter of the nineteenth century: a Parisian movement of proven design, dressed in a Petersburg dial and signed with the mark of a respected metropolitan firm. The instrument is good both as a measuring device and as an object: it is equally at home on a desk or on a wall, its brass responds gratefully to the light, and the Russian scale, with its yat and hard signs, makes it also a small testament to a vanished orthography — and to the world that vanished with it, in which the firm of Mielck furnished an enlightened St. Petersburg with precision instruments.