Who invented the water thermometer?

Answer 1

Galileo Galilei invented a rudimentary water thermometer (using the contraction of air to draw water up a tube). He also discovered that liquids of lesser density than water could be suspended within it and that they would float at different heights depending on the temperature; hence Galileo's Thermoscope--Galileo's use of alcohol enclosed in glass spheres floating in a column of water in order to measure their differences in temperature. In 1714, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the first mercury thermometer. In 1866 Sir Thomas Clifford Allbutt invented a clinical thermometer that produced a body temperature reading in five minutes as opposed to twenty.[1]

This history of the thermometer, from its invention in the early sixteenth century (an achievement attributed to at least four scientists, including Galileo) through various changes and applications over the next three centuries, includes controversy about its invention, the story of different scales, from Fahrenheit and Anders Celsius to the now-forgotten Newton, Réaumur, Delisle, and Christin scales, and the history of the gradual scientific then popular understanding of the concept of temperature. Not until 1800 did people interested in thermometers begin to see clearly what they were measuring, and the impetus for improving thermometry came largely from study of the weather -- the liquid-in-glass thermometer became the meteorologist's instrument before that of the chemist or physicist.

Answer 2

I'm pretty sure it was Galileo Galilei. I saw online that he invented the rudimentary water thermometer in 1593. I don't know if it's true. It's what I read though. I googled it, and that's how I found out!

Answer 3

I don't think anyone did. Most thermometers are alcohol or mercury.