The invention of the mercury barometer is generally credited to Evangelista Torricelli, an Italian physicist and mathematician, in 1643.

While Torricelli was not the first to observe the phenomenon of atmospheric pressure, he was the first to successfully create a device that could accurately measure it. He used a glass tube filled with mercury and inverted into a dish of mercury, demonstrating that the height of the mercury column was directly related to the weight of the atmosphere pressing down on the surface of the mercury in the dish.