Pneumatics emerged as a rigorously scientific discipline in the seventeenth century. The seminal event occurred in 1644, when Evangelista Torricelli conclusively demonstrated the weight of air and its effects. This led to the invention of the barometer and the construction of air pumps, used to investigate vacuum and its effects. In the mid-seventeenth century, the air pump enabled Otto von Guericke to demonstrate the action of atmospheric pressure by means of a famous experiment. The air pump was continuously improved and widely used in experimental-physics research.

In the nineteenth century, piston pumps gave way to mercury-fall pumps, capable of producing stronger vacuums. These proved to be indispensable for the study of electrical discharges in rare gases and for the production of the first light bulbs and X-ray tubes.