Accession No
1455
Brief Description
4 mercury in glass thermometers, English, c.1844
Origin
England
Maker
Class
laboratory apparatus; thermometry
Earliest Date
1844
Latest Date
1844
Inscription Date
Material
glass; metal (mercury, brass); wood; cloth (worsted, cotton wool, baize)
Dimensions
1455.1 length 926mm; maximum diameter 15mm 1455.2 length 729mm; maximum diameter 14mm 1455.3 length 557mm; maximum diameter 14mm 1455.4 length 646mm; maximum diameter 15mm box length 976mm; breadth 147mm; height 91mm
Special Collection
Provenance
Transferred from the Department of Mineralogy and Petrology, University of Cambridge in 02/1976.
Inscription
Description Notes
1455.1: Long-bulb mercury in glass thermometer. Scale scratched on glass, divided 0 - [33], numbered by 1, subdivided to 0.1. Paper label marked ‘I’.
1455.2: Broad long-bulb mercury in glass thermometer. Scale scratched on glass, divided [1] - 51, numbered by 1, subdivided to 0.1. Paper label marked ‘II’.
1455.3: Broad medium long-bulb mercury in glass thermometer. Scale scratched on glass, divided 0 - [19.2], numbered by 1, subdivided to 0.1. Paper label marked ‘III’.
1455.4: Broad long-bulb mercury in glass thermometer. Scale scratched on glass, divided 0 - 20, numbered by 1, subdivided to 0.1. Bore expands at upper end to accommodate mercury when temperature exceeds top of scale. Paper label marked ‘IV’.
Wooden box with brass hinges and hook fasteners. Lined with green baize. Cotton wool packing. Worsted casing for 1455.2.
Condition good; 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:45664
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