Accession No

1931


Brief Description

Spirit-in-glass minimum thermometer, by W. E. Pain, English, late C19th


Origin

Cambridge; England


Maker

Pain. W.E.


Class

meteorology


Earliest Date

1870


Latest Date

1909


Inscription Date


Material

wood; metal (brass); glass; liquid (alcohol)


Dimensions

length 285mm; breadth 60mm; thickness 26mm


Special Collection

Cavendish collection


Provenance

Transferred from the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge in 1974.


Inscription

‘W.E. PAIN CAMBRIDGE’ (mount)


Description Notes

Spirit-in-glass minimum thermometer, by W. E. Pain, English, late C19th.

Round-bulb spirit in glass minimum F thermometer, on wooden mount; three brass brackets on mount. Marked ‘MINIMUM’ at top end of thermometer. Thermometer is held in place by brass brackets. Alcohol is dyed pink.
Scale divided [-7] - 130˚ 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:42194

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