1592–1593 — Galileo Galilei builds a device showing variation of hotness known as the thermoscope using the contraction of air to draw water up a tube.[1]
1624 — The word thermometer (in its French form) first appeared in La Récréation Mathématique by Jean Leurechon, who describes one with a scale of 8 degrees.[2]
1654 — Ferdinando II de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, made sealed tubes part filled with alcohol, with a bulb and stem, the first modern-style thermometer, depending on the expansion of a liquid, and independent of air pressure[2]
1669 — Honoré Fabri suggested using a temperature scale by dividing into 8 equal parts the interval between "greatest heat of summer" and melting snow.[3]
1676 to 1679 — Edme Mariotte conducted experiments that under the French Academy of Science’s Paris Observatory, resulting in wide adoption of temperatures of deep cellars as a fixed reference point, rather than snow or water freezing points.[4]
1685 — Giovanni Alfonso Borelli's posthumously published De motu animalium ["On the movements of animals"] reported that the temperature of blood in a vivisected stag is the same in the left ventricle of the heart, the liver, lungs and intestines.[5]
1688 — Joachim Dalencé proposed constructing a thermometer by dividing into 20 equal degrees the interval between freezing water and melting butter, then extrapolating 4 degrees upwards and downwards.[6]
1701 — Newton publishes anonymously a method of determining the rate of heat loss of a body and introduces a scale, which had 0 degrees represent the freezing point of water, and 12 degrees for human body temperature. He used linseed oil as the thermometric fluid.[6]
1701 — Ole Christensen Rømer made one of the first practical thermometers. As a temperature indicator it used red wine. (Rømer scale), The temperature scale used for his thermometer had 0 representing the temperature of a salt and ice mixture (at about 259 s).
1709 — Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit constructed alcohol thermometers which were reproducible (i.e. two would give the same temperature)
1714 — Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit invents the mercury-in-glass thermometer giving much greater precision (4 x that of Rømer). Using Rømer's zero point and an upper point of blood temperature, he adjusted the scale so the melting point of ice was 32 and the upper point 96, meaning that the difference of 64 could be got by dividing the intervals into 2 repeatedly.[7]
1731 — René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur produced a scale in which 0 represented the freezing point of water and 80 represented the boiling point. This was chosen as his alcohol mixture expanded 80 parts per thousand. He did not consider pressure.[8]
1742 — Anders Celsius proposed a temperature scale in which 100 represented the temperature of melting ice and 0 represented the boiling point of water at 25 inches and 3 lines of barometric mercury height.[8] This corresponds to 751.16 mm,[9] so that on the present-day definition, this boiling point is 99.67 degrees Celsius.[10]
1743 — Jean-Pierre Christin had worked independently of Celsius and developed a scale where zero represented the melting point of ice and 100 represented the boiling point but did not specify a pressure.[8]
1744 — Carl Linnaeus suggested reversing the temperature scale of Anders Celsius so that 0 represented the freezing point of water and 100 represented the boiling point.
^Borelli, Giovanni Alfonso (1989). "Proposition XCVI: Respiration was not instituted to cool and ventilate the flame and heat of the heart.". On the Movement of Animals. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg. ISBN978-3-642-73812-8. OCLC851779618.