The rate and extent to which chemical reactions occur

2 - Temperature Measuring Devices

Temperature measurement (also known as thermometry) describes the process of measuring a current local temperature for immediate or later evaluation. Datasets consisting of repeated standardized measurements can be used to assess temperature trends.
Some of the principles of thermometry were known to Greek philosophers of two thousand years ago. As Henry Carrington Bolton (1900) noted, the thermometer's "development from a crude toy to an instrument of precision occupied more than a century, and its early history is encumbered with erroneous statements that have been reiterated with such dogmatism that they have received the false stamp of authority."^[1] In the first decades of the 18th century in the Dutch Republic, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit,  made two revolutionary breakthroughs in the history of thermometry. He invented the mercury-in-glass thermometer (first widely used, accurate, practical thermometer)^[1] and Fahrenheit scale (first standardized temperature scale to be widely used).

History

Attempts at standardized temperature measurement prior to the 17th century were crude at best. For instance in 170 AD, physician Claudius Galenus mixed equal portions of ice and boiling water to create a "neutral" temperature standard. The modern scientific field has its origins in the works by Florentine scientists in the 1600s including Galileo constructing devices able to measure relative change in temperature, but subject also to confounding with atmospheric pressure changes. These early devices were called thermoscopes. The first sealed thermometer was constructed in 1654 by the Grand Duke of Toscani, Ferdinand II. The development of today's thermometers and temperature scales began in the early 18th century, when Gabriel Fahrenheit produced a mercury thermometer and scale, both developed by Ole Christensen Rømer. Fahrenheit's scale is still in use, alongside the Celsius and Kelvin scales.