Page:Evolution of the thermometer.djvu/26

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the heat of the sun and of the moon, and recorded that in sunlight the water in his thermometer fell "110 degrees in two pulse-beats."

Before dismissing the connection of Sanctorius with the thermometer I note that the Italian physician nowhere claims to have invented it; on the contrary, he calls it in his "Commentaries on Galen" a "most ancient instrument." (P. 538, edition 1612.)[1]

II. Thermoscopes of the Accademia del Cimento.

Modifications and improvements of the thermoscope were probably made by many savants interested in their use, both in Italy, the birthplace of the instrument, and in all parts of Europe to which the knowledge of the invention penetrated, but few records of them have survived.

There is a manuscript preserved in the library of the Arsenal, Venice, entitled "Matematica meravigliosa," written by Telioux, a Roman engineer, in 1611, that is said by the historian

  1. Prof. Cleveland Abbe suggests that this instrument had doubtless been used to illustrate the expansion of air by heat for a long time previous to Galileo, who simply added a scale for the use of Sanctorius so that the physician could express the intensity of fevers.