What kind of thermometer(s) have you used this year?

The year 2020 probably beat out any other year for the number of times people got their temperature taken. Daily? Twice a day? Thrice? The answer would depend on where you live and where you wanted to go! What kind of thermometer(s) have you used this year?

BYGONES

1593

Galileo Galilei has done it again! The Italian inventor used the common knowledge that liquids expand when they are warm, and contract when they are cool — and took it one step further to develop the thermoscope. This was a test tube filled with water and glass bulbs, which rose and fell with the changing temps. Sorry, no data available on exactly how cold or hot it was, just that a change occurred.

1709

Ah, now you can finally tell the temperature with a brand-new apparatus called the thermometer (using the brand-new system of measuring!). Daniel Fahrenheit (of the °F fame) included numbers on his test tube — with 32 degrees as the freezing point and 212 degrees as the boiling point. And he used mercury as the liquid instead of alcohol because mercury can measure temperatures. Wonder if Daniel knew that one day his last name would be a household word?!