Inventions & Discoveries · Science and discovery
Thermometer
A thermometer measures temperature through a change in a sensor that is read against a scale. Philo of Byzantium in the 3rd century BCE and Hero of Alexandria described devices in which heated and cooled air moved water, and in the late 16th and early 17th centuries Galileo Galilei and Santorio Santorio built thermoscopes, which had no scale. The first instrument shown with a scale, and so a thermometer, was Santorio's of 1625; in 1629 Joseph Solomon Delmedigo described a sealed liquid-in-glass thermometer. Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit made a reliable mercury thermometer in 1714, and Anders Celsius proposed his scale in 1742.
On the inventions tree
- First known
- 1625
- Credited to
- Santorio Santorio
NoteGalileo is often said to be the inventor, but no surviving document shows that he made such an instrument. Jean Leurechon described one with a scale of 8 degrees in 1624.
Mentioned in 1 profile
See also
Cite this entry
- APA
- The Epoch Institute. (2026). Thermometer. In The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/thermometer
- MLA
- “Thermometer.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/thermometer. Accessed .
- Chicago
- The Epoch Institute. “Thermometer.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/thermometer.
- Harvard
- The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Thermometer’, The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/thermometer (Accessed: ).
Last reviewed October 2026Random entry ↻