Charles Wilder's three Barometer forms. Peterborough, New Hampshire.
Pictured here are the three versions of wall barometers made by Charles Wilder. The one to the left is considered the standard model and is most commonly found. The one on the right is often called the baseball bat model. This version does not come to the marketplace very often. The center example is also hard to find. All three are approximately 38 inches tall.
Charles Wilder, the son of Mark and Eliza Ann (Thayer) Wilder, attended common schools and the Academy in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He became a popular teacher and later served as Principal at the Academy. Although he intended to pursue a legal career, his father's debts required him to join the family's shoe peg manufacturing business. After two years, in 1860, Wilder obtained the rights to manufacture portable mercury barometers under a patent held by Lum Woodruff of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Woodruff, who reported weather observations to the Smithsonian Institution, patented a portable barometer that gained significant popularity. The instrument's primary innovation was a divided two-chamber cistern, which allowed the lower portion to remain filled with mercury and be isolated from the upper section when empty. In the fall of 1861, Wilder converted a factory in Peterborough into a barometer workshop and actively promoted Woodruff's instrument. He described it as "simple, durable, accurate, perfectly portable, and very cheap" and "a very beautiful and ornamental piece of furniture." The barometer was marketed as providing farmers with a five percent savings on crops, offering "superior accuracy" for scientists, and serving as a "never ending and constantly varying study of interest" for "gentlemen of leisure and cultivation." All three of Wilder's standard barometer designs also functioned as thermometers, with Fahrenheit scales typically ranging from -20 to 120 degrees. Wilder Barometers were distributed throughout the United States via advertisements in leading agricultural periodicals. As a prominent businessman and community member, Wilder was an active church supporter and served as a state legislative representative in 1869 and 1870, as well as town moderator in 1869. He died in 1900. The business continued briefly before being sold to the W. & L. E. Gurley Instrument Company of Troy, New York. Most of this information was provided by the Peterborough, New Hampshire Historical Society.
