Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: When was the mercury thermometer invented?
Before there was the thermometer, there was the earlier and closely related thermoscope, best described as a thermometer without a temperature scale. A thermoscope only showed the differences in temperatures, for example, it could show something was getting hotter. However, the thermoscope did not measure all the data that a thermometer could, for example an exact temperature in degrees. What can be considered the first modern thermometer, the mercury thermometer with a standardized scale, was invented by German-Dutch scientist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (who had settled in Amsterdam in 1701) in 1714. Fahrenheit invented the first truly accurate thermometer using mercury instead of alcohol and water mixtures. He began constructing his own thermometers in 1714, and it was in these that he used mercury for the first time.
Modern thermostat control was developed in the 1830s by Andrew Ure (1778–1857), a Scottish chemist, who invented the bi-metallic thermostat. The textile mills of the time needed a constant and steady temperature to operate optimally, so to achieve this Ure designed the bimetallic thermostat, which would bend as one of the metals expanded in response to the increased temperature and cut off the energy supply.
Invented in 1892 by Sir James Dewar, a scientist at Oxford University, the "vacuum flask" was not manufactured for commercial use until 1904, when two German glass blowers, "Reinhold Burger" and "Albert Aschenbrenner," formed Thermos GmbH. They held a contest to name the "vacuum flask" and a resident of Munich submitted "Thermos," which came from the Greek word "therme," meaning "heat."
A thermostat is a device for regulating the temperature of a system so that the system's temperature is maintained near a desired setpoint temperature. The thermostat does this by switching heating or cooling devices on or off, or regulating the flow of a heat transfer fluid as needed, to maintain the correct temperature. The thermostat was invented in 1883 by Warren S. Johnson.
Mercury is a chemical element with symbol Hg and atomic number 80. It is commonly known as quicksilver and was formerly named hydrargyrum ( ). A heavy, silvery d-block element, mercury is the only metallic element that is liquid at standard conditions for temperature and pressure; the only other element that is liquid under these conditions is bromine, though metals such as caesium, gallium, and rubidium melt just above room temperature.
The first thermostats used a sealed capsule of an organic liquid with a boiling point just below the desired opening temperature. These capsules were made in the form of a cylindrical bellows. As the liquid boiled inside the capsule, the capsule bellows expanded, opening a sheet brass plug valve within the thermostat. As these thermostats could fail in service, they were designed for easy replacement during servicing, usually by being mounted under the water outlet fitting at the top of the cylinder block. Conveniently this was also the hottest accessible part of the cooling circuit, giving a fast response when warming up.
Circa 1797, Count Rumford (born Benjamin Thompson) showed that endless mechanical action can generate indefinitely large amounts of heat from a fixed amount of working substance thus challenging the caloric theory of heat, which held that there would be a finite amount of caloric heat/energy in a fixed amount of working substance. The first established thermodynamic principle, which eventually became the second law of thermodynamics, was formulated by Sadi Carnot in 1824. By 1860, as formalized in the works of those such as Rudolf Clausius and William Thomson, two established principles of thermodynamics had evolved, the first principle and the second principle, later restated as thermodynamic laws. By 1873, for example, thermodynamicist Josiah Willard Gibbs, in his memoir "Graphical Methods in the Thermodynamics of Fluids", clearly stated the first two absolute laws of thermodynamics. Some textbooks throughout the 20th century have numbered the laws differently. In some fields removed from chemistry, the second law was considered to deal with the efficiency of heat engines only, whereas what was called the third law dealt with entropy increases. Directly defining zero points for entropy calculations was not considered to be a law. Gradually, this separation was combined into the second law and the modern third law was widely adopted.
Hg is the modern chemical symbol for mercury. It comes from "hydrargyrum", a Latinized form of the Greek word Ύδραργυρος ("hydrargyros"), which is a compound word meaning "water-silver" (hydr- = water, argyros = silver) — since it is liquid like water and shiny like silver. The element was named after the Roman god Mercury, known for speed and mobility. It is associated with the planet Mercury; the astrological symbol for the planet is also one of the alchemical symbols for the metal. Mercury is the only metal for which the alchemical planetary name became the common name.
Hg is the modern chemical symbol for mercury. It comes from "hydrargyrum", a Latinized form of the Greek word ὑδράργυρος ("hydrargyros"), which is a compound word meaning "water-silver" (from ὑδρ- "hydr-", the root of ὕδωρ, "water," and ἄργυρος "argyros" "silver") – since it is liquid like water and shiny like silver. The element was named after the Roman god Mercury, known for his speed and mobility. It is associated with the planet Mercury; the astrological symbol for the planet is also one of the alchemical symbols for the metal; the Sanskrit word for alchemy is "Rasavātam" which means "the way of mercury". Mercury is the only metal for which the alchemical planetary name became the common name.
In 1654, Otto von Guericke invented the first vacuum pump and conducted his famous Magdeburg hemispheres experiment, showing that teams of horses could not separate two hemispheres from which the air had been partially evacuated. Robert Boyle improved Guericke's design and with the help of Robert Hooke further developed vacuum pump technology. Thereafter, research into the partial vacuum lapsed until 1850 when August Toepler invented the Toepler Pump and Heinrich Geissler invented the mercury displacement pump in 1855, achieving a partial vacuum of about 10 Pa (0.1 Torr). A number of electrical properties become observable at this vacuum level, which renewed interest in further research.
The vacuum flask was designed and invented by Scottish scientist Sir James Dewar in 1892 as a result of his research in the field of cryogenics and is sometimes called a Dewar flask in his honour. While performing experiments in determining the specific heat of the element palladium, Dewar made a brass chamber that he enclosed in another chamber to keep the palladium at its desired temperature. He evacuated the air between the two chambers, creating a partial vacuum to keep the temperature of the contents stable. Through the need for this insulated container James Dewar created the vacuum flask, which became a significant tool for chemical experiments and also became a common household item. The flask was later developed using new materials such as glass and aluminum; however, Dewar refused to patent his invention.
Although accurate, shadow clocks relied on the sun, and so were useless at night and in cloudy weather. The Egyptians therefore developed a number of alternative timekeeping instruments, including water clocks, and a system for tracking star movements. The oldest description of a water clock is from the tomb inscription of the 16th-century Egyptian court official Amenemhet, identifying him as its inventor. There were several types of water clocks, some more elaborate than others. One type consisted of a bowl with small holes in its bottom, which was floated on water and allowed to fill at a near-constant rate; markings on the side of the bowl indicated elapsed time, as the surface of the water reached them. The oldest-known waterclock was found in the tomb of pharaoh Amenhotep I (1525–1504), suggesting that they were first used in ancient Egypt. Another Egyptian method of determining the time during the night was using plumb-lines called merkhets. In use since at least 600, two of these instruments were aligned with Polaris, the north pole star, to create a north–south meridian. The time was accurately measured by observing certain stars as they crossed the line created with the "merkhets".
Warren S. Johnson (1847–1911) of Wisconsin patented a bi-metal room thermostat in 1883, and two years later filed a patent for the first multi-zone thermostatic control system.
Albert Butz (1849–1905) invented the electric thermostat and patented it in 1886.
About 20 years later, John Ambrose Fleming (scientific adviser to the Marconi Company
and former Edison employee) realized that the Edison effect could be used as a radio detector. Fleming patented the first true thermionic diode, the Fleming valve, in Britain on November 16, 1904 (followed by in November 1905).
From the first scientific investigations of the pendulum around 1602 by Galileo Galilei, the regular motion of pendulums was used for timekeeping, and was the world's most accurate timekeeping technology until the 1930s. The pendulum clock invented by Christian Huygens in 1658 became the world's standard timekeeper, used in homes and offices for 270 years, and achieved accuracy of about one second per year before it was superseded as a time standard by the quartz clock in the 1930s. Pendulums are also used in scientific instruments such as accelerometers and seismometers. Historically they were used as gravimeters to measure the acceleration of gravity in geophysical surveys, and even as a standard of length. The word "pendulum" is new Latin, from the Latin "pendulus", meaning 'hanging'.
The first discovery of electromagnetic radiation other than visible light came in 1800, when William Herschel discovered infrared radiation. He was studying the temperature of different colors by moving a thermometer through light split by a prism. He noticed that the highest temperature was beyond red. He theorized that this temperature change was due to "calorific rays" that were a type of light ray that could not be seen.
Although precursors to this table exist, its invention is generally credited to Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869. Mendeleev invented the table to illustrate recurring ("periodic") trends in the properties of the elements. The layout of the table has been refined and extended over time, as new elements have been discovered, and new theoretical models have been developed to explain chemical behavior.
In 1926, Max Planck wrote an important paper on the basics of thermodynamics. He indicated the principle
Electromagnetic radiation of wavelengths other than those of visible light were discovered in the early 19th century. The discovery of infrared radiation is ascribed to astronomer William Herschel, who published his results in 1800 before the Royal Society of London. Herschel used a glass prism to refract light from the Sun and detected invisible rays that caused heating beyond the red part of the spectrum, through an increase in the temperature recorded with a thermometer. These "calorific rays" were later termed infrared.
Germany has a long heritage of using electromagnetic waves for detecting objects. In 1888, Heinrich Hertz, who first demonstrated the existence of these waves, also noted that they, like light, were reflected by metal surfaces. In 1904, Christian Hülsmeyer obtained German and foreign patents for an apparatus, the "Telemobilskop", using a "spark gap transmitter" that could detect ships and prevent collisions; this is often cited as the first radar, but, without directly providing range, it does not qualify for this classification. With the advent of the radio tube and electronics, other detection-only systems were developed, but all used continuous waves and could not measure distance.
In 1933, physicist Rudolf Kühnhold, Scientific Director at the "Kriegsmarine" (German Navy) "Nachrichtenmittel-Versuchsanstalt" (NVA—Experimental Institute of Communication Systems) in Kiel, initiated experiments in the microwave region to measure the distance to a target. For the transmitter, he obtained assistance from two radio amateur operators, Paul-Günther Erbslöh and Hans-Karl Freiherr von Willisen. In January 1934, they formed at Berlin-Oberschöneweide the company "Gesellschaft für Elektroakustische und Mechanische Apparate" (GEMA) for this work.
The relation between electric current, magnetic fields and physical forces was first noted by Hans Christian Ørsted who, in 1820, observed a compass needle was deflected from pointing North when a current flowed in an adjacent wire. The tangent galvanometer was used to measure currents using this effect, where the restoring force returning the pointer to the zero position was provided by the Earth's magnetic field. This made these instruments usable only when aligned with the Earth's field. Sensitivity of the instrument was increased by using additional turns of wire to multiply the effect – the instruments were called "multipliers".
Various authors have credited the invention of the thermometer to Cornelis Drebbel, Robert Fludd, Galileo Galilei or Santorio Santorio. The thermometer was not a single invention, however, but a development. However, each inventor and each thermometer was unique – there was no standard scale. In 1665 Christiaan Huygens suggested using the melting and boiling points of water as standards, and in 1694 Carlo Renaldini proposed using them as fixed points on a universal scale. In 1701 Isaac Newton proposed a scale of 12 degrees between the melting point of ice and body temperature. Finally in 1724 Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit produced a temperature scale which now (slightly adjusted) bears his name. He could do this because he manufactured thermometers, using mercury (which has a high coefficient of expansion) for the first time and the quality of his production could provide a finer scale and greater reproducibility, leading to its general adoption. The Fahrenheit scale was the first widely used temperature scale. By the end of the 20th century, most countries used the Celsius scale rather than the Fahrenheit scale, though Canada retained it as a supplementary scale used alongside Celsius. Fahrenheit remains the official scale for Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, Belize, the Bahamas, Palau and the United States and associated territories.
Réaumur’s thermometer contained diluted alcohol (ethanol) and was constructed on the principle of using 0° for the freezing temperature of water, and graduating the tube into degrees, each of which was one-thousandth of the volume contained by the bulb and tube up to the zero mark. He suggested that the concentration of alcohol employed be such that it began boiling at 80 °Ré — that is, when it had expanded in volume by 8%. He chose alcohol instead of mercury because it expands more visibly, but this posed problems: his original thermometers were very bulky, and the low boiling point of alcohol made them unsuitable for many applications. Instrument-makers generally chose different liquids, and then used 80 °Ré to signify the boiling point of water, causing much confusion. During 1772 Jean-André Deluc studied the several substances then used in thermometers and concluded that mercurial thermometers were the best for practical use; for example, if two equal amounts of water at "x" and "y" degrees were mixed, the temperature of the result was then the average of "x" and "y" degrees, and this relationship was only reliable when mercury was used. From the late 18th century mercury was used almost without exception.
Today, the use of mercury in medicine has greatly declined in all respects, especially in developed countries. Thermometers and sphygmomanometers containing mercury were invented in the early 18th and late 19th centuries, respectively. In the early 21st century, their use is declining and has been banned in some countries, states and medical institutions. In 2002, the U.S. Senate passed legislation to phase out the sale of non-prescription mercury thermometers. In 2003, Washington and Maine became the first states to ban mercury blood pressure devices. Mercury compounds are found in some over-the-counter drugs, including topical antiseptics, stimulant laxatives, diaper-rash ointment, eye drops, and nasal sprays. The FDA has "inadequate data to establish general recognition of the safety and effectiveness" of the mercury ingredients in these products. Mercury is still used in some diuretics although substitutes now exist for most therapeutic uses.
A pioneer of exact thermometry, he helped lay the foundations for the era of precision thermometry by inventing the mercury-in-glass thermometer (first practical, accurate thermometer) and Fahrenheit scale (first standardized temperature scale to be widely used). In other words, Fahrenheit's inventions ushered in the first revolution in the history of thermometry (branch of physics concerned with methods of temperature measurement). From the early 1710s until the beginnings of the electronic era, mercury-in-glass thermometers were among the most reliable and accurate thermometers ever invented.