If I go to the history of chemistry, via Wikipedia, I learn - among many very, very interesting things - that, starting in about the 1660s (in Europe), gas pressure was carefully observed, and then in the early 1700s it was explained as the kinetic energy of gas molecules.
Read the details at Wikipedia under Boyle's Law.
The kinetic theory must mean that gas pressure is caused by the cumulative impact of numerous molecules colliding with a vessel wall, or the surface of an object. If we know the total mass of the gas in a vessel, for instance, we may be able to calculate a ratio of the number of collisions that mass would need to make and the velocity of each collision, to produce the observed pressure.
This doesn't tell us how many atoms are in a given amount of gas ... it just hints at the number, or at the idea that there are many atoms in a volume of gas.
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