Accession No
2109
Brief Description
Spirit-in-glass maximum thermometer, Walter E. Pain, English, late C19th
Origin
Cambridge; England
Maker
Walter E. Pain
Class
meteorology
Earliest Date
1870
Latest Date
1909
Inscription Date
Material
wood; metal (brass); glass; liquid (alcohol)
Dimensions
length 340mm; breadth 64mm; thickness 29mm
Special Collection
Provenance
Transferred from Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England, 10/1975.
Inscription
‘WALTER. E. PAIN Cambridge ‘ (on scale)
Description Notes
Spirit-in-glass maximum thermometer, Walter E. Pain, English, late C19th.
With ceramic scale in wooden base. Thermometer held in place by brass (? - very corroded) brackets. Scale divided on thermometer but numbered on ceramic, divided [-20] - [122]˚F numbered by 10 subdivided to 1.
Condition fair; complete
References
Events
Description
A thermometer is an instrument that measures how hot or cold something is, in other words, its temperature. Most familiar is the "Mercury-in-glass" thermometer, but there are many other kinds.
Many materials expand as they get hotter and contract as they get colder . This expansion and contraction can be used to measure the corresponding changes in temperature. Thus the first useful thermometers were made from a glass bulb full of mercury to which was attached a narrow glass tube. As the bulb is heated a fine thread of mercury expands up the narrow tube. Thermometers, requiring great skill in glass working, were first made by Daniel Fahrenheit of Amsterdam in 1717.
To measure temperature precisely, a numerical scale of "degrees" is needed. To provide this scale two fixed points are chosen, such as melting ice and boiling water. Convenient temperatures are then given to these two fixed points: today melting ice is given a temperature of 0 degrees and boiling water 100 degrees. This is the Celsius or Centigrade scale (although it is quite arbitrary). Fahrenheit himself originally chose the coldest temperature that he could produce (a freezing mixture of ammonium chloride and snow) as 0 degrees and body temperature as 96 degrees. This resulted in the Fahrenheit scale in which the freezing point of water is 32° F and the boiling point of water is 212° F.
01/03/2001
Created by: Chris Lewis on 01/03/2001
FM:42193
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