Robert Boyle (1627-1691) English physicist and chemist, first determined that compressibility of air in a closed system varied with pressure in a simple inverse relationship. If pressure doubled, volume halved. The first and second states of a closed system's pressure and volume can be stated as
P1V1 = P2V2
Otherwise known as Boyle's Law. In 1662, he performed the experiment to esatblish this principle by trapping air in the closed end of a tube shaped like a J, and added a known quantity of mercury ot increase the pressure, and noted the change in the volume.
Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, I. Asimov, pg. 94, 1964.
See an animation of this experiment at the link:
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