How old is the thermometer?
The earliest scientists naturally observed the changing temperature of the weather. They knew, of course, that fire makes objects hotter and that warm objects become cooler in the chilly air. It may have occurred to several thinkers that heat might be measured but not one it seems tried to do this tricky job until some 370 years ago. The scholars of ancient Greece worked out a brilliant system of math and observed the laws of nature with great accuracy. There also were talented scholars in old Babylon and Egypt. These early thinkers mapped and charted and measured the starry heavens and the face of the earth. But they failed to find ways to measure such everyday forces as heat and air pressure. Their minds did not turn to the invention of machines or delicate instruments. The thermometer and the barometer both were unknown to these wise scholars of the ancient world. Modern science dawned late in the 16th century, perhaps when Copernicus suggested the true picture of our solar system.
