Thermoscope
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A thermoscope is a device that shows changes in temperature. A typical design is a tube in which a liquid rises and falls as the temperature changes. The modern thermometer gradually evolved from it with the addition of a scale in the early 17th century and standardisation throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.[1][2]
Devices employing both heat and pressure were common during Galileo's time, used for fountains, nursing, or bleeding in medicine.[3] The device was built from a small vase filled with water,[4] attached to a thin vertically rising pipe, with a large empty glass ball at the top. Changes in temperature of the upper ball would exert positive or negative pressure on the water below, causing it to rise or lower in the thin column.[3] The device established fixed points but does not measure specific quantity, although it can tell when something is warmer than another thing.[5]
Essentially, thermoscopes served as a justification of sorts regarding what is observed or experienced by the senses – that the device's basic agreement with the indications of the senses generates initial confidence in its reliability.[5]
Large thermoscopes placed outdoors appeared to cause perpetual motion of contained water, and these were therefore sometimes called perpetuum mobile.[3] Galileo's own work with the thermoscope led him to develop an essentially atomistic conception of heat, published in his book Il Saggiatore in 1623.[3]
