Thermometer

What is a Thermometer?

Thermometers measure temperature, by using materials that change in some way when they are heated or cooled. In a mercury or alcohol thermometer the liquid expands as it is heated and contracts when it is cooled, so the length of the liquid column is longer or shorter depending on the temperature. Modern thermometers are calibrated in standard temperature units such as Fahrenheit (used in the United States) or Celsius (used in Canada) and Kelvin (used mostly by scientists).

What is a Thermoscope?

Before there was the thermometer, there was the earlier and closely related thermoscope, best described as a thermometer without a scale. A thermoscope only showed the differences in temperatures, for example, it could show something was getting hotter. However, the thermoscope did not measure all the data that a thermometer could, for example an exact temperature in degrees.

Early History

Several inventors invented a version of the thermoscope at the same time. In 1593, Galileo Galilei invented a rudimentary water thermoscope, which for the first time, allowed temperature variations to be measured. Today, Galileo's inventioni is called the Galileo Thermometer, even though by definition it was really a thermoscope. It was a container filled with bulbs of varying mass, each with a temperature marking, the buoyancy of water changes with temperature, some of the bulbs sink while others float, the lowest bulb indicated what temperature it was.

In 1612, the Italian inventor Santorio Santorio became the first inventor to put a numerical scale on his thermoscope. It was perhaps the first crude clinical thermometer, as it was designed to be place in a patient's mouth for temperature taking.

Both Galilei's and Santorio's instruments were not very accurate.

In 1654, the first enclosed liquid-in-a-glass thermometer was invented by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand II. The Duke used alcohol as his liquid. However, it was still inaccurate and used no standardized scale.

Fahrenheit Scale - Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit

What can be considered the first modern thermometer, the mercury thermometer with a standardized scale, was invented by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit in 1714.

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit was the German physicist who invented a alcohol thermometer in 1709, and the mercury thermometer in 1714. In 1724, he introduced the standard temperature scale that bears his name - Fahrenheit Scale - that was used to record changes in temperature in an accurate fashion.

The Fahrenheit scale divided the freezing and boiling points of water into 180 degrees. 32°F was the freezing pint of water and 212°F was the boiling point of water. 0°F was based on the temperature of an equal mixture of water, ice, and salt. Fahrenheit based his temperature scale on the temperature of the human body. Originally, the human body temperature was 100° F on the Fahrenheit scale, but it has since been adjusted to 98.6°F.

Centigrade Scale - Anders Celsius

The Celsius temperature scale is also referred to as the "centigrade" scale. Centigrade means "consisting of or divided into 100 degrees". In 1742, the Celsius scale was invented by Swedish Astronomer Anders Celsius. The Celsius scale has 100 degrees between the freezing point (0°C) and boiling point (100°C) of pure water at sea level air pressure. The term "Celsius" was adopted in 1948 by an international conference on weights and measures.

Kelvin Scale - Lord Kelvin

Lord Kelvin took the whole process one step further with his invention of the Kelvin Scale in 1848. The Kelvin Scale measures the ultimate extremes of hot and cold. Kelvin developed the idea of absolute temperature, what is called the "Second Law of Thermodynamics", and developed the dynamical theory of heat.

In the 19th century, scientists were researching what was the lowest temperature possible. The Kelvin scale uses the same units as the Celcius scale, but it starts at ABSOLUTE ZERO, the temperature at which everything including air freezes solid. Absolute zero is O K, which is - 273°C degrees Celsius