The first artificial vacuum was made in 1643, inside a tube of mercury

Evangelista Torricelli filled a glass tube with mercury, inverted it into a dish, and watched the mercury drop slightly, leaving an empty space at the top that nothing could explain except a vacuum, something many philosophers at the time insisted was impossible. His tube became the first barometer, and the empty space above the mercury is still called a Torricellian vacuum.

— Evangelista Torricelli, Letter to Michelangelo Ricci — 1644