Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An instrument or a device for indicating variations in temperature without measuring their amount.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Physics) An instrument for indicating changes of temperature without indicating the degree of heat by which it is affected; especially, an instrument contrived by Count Rumford which, as modified by Professor Leslie, was afterward called the differential thermometer.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A scientific instrument that measures the changes in temperature.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

thermo- +‎ -scope

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Examples

  • The invention of the thermometer--originally called the thermoscope--is attributed to a number of people, including Galileo, the famous astronomer and physicist (1564 -1642), Santorio Santorio, an Italian physician (1561-1636), and Ferdinand II, the Grand Duke of Tuscany (1610 - 1670), who, in 1654, used alcohol as the medium.

    40 below zero: One coincidence & two oddities Don Lipman 2011

  • To turn a modern thermometer into a thermoscope we need only remove the figures from its scale.

    Man or Matter Ernst Lehrs

  • The birth of the method of pointer-reading is marked by Galileo's construction of the first thermometer (actually, a thermoscope).

    Man or Matter Ernst Lehrs

  • Observations of this kind, made by means of the thermoscope, created an ardent desire for the transformation of this apparatus into a thermometer, by the aid of a definite graduation so arranged that everywhere instruments could be made which would be comparable with one another.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 12: Philip II-Reuss 1840-1916 1913

  • The use of the dilatation of a fluid for showing the changes of temperature was already known to Galileo, but it is uncertain whether the thermoscope was invented by Galileo or by some one of the numerous physicists to whom the priority is attributed, among these being Santorio, called

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 12: Philip II-Reuss 1840-1916 1913

  • The 'micro-tasimeter,' a delicate thermoscope, was constructed in 1878, and is the outcome of Edison's experiments with the carbon button.

    Heroes of the Telegraph John Munro 1889

  • Galvani first stimulated the nervous fiber by the accidental contact of two heterogeneous metals, his contemporaries could never have anticipated that the action of the voltaic pile would discover to us, in the alkalies, metals of a silvery luster, so light as to swim on water, and eminently inflammable; or that it would become a powerful instrument of chemical analysis, and at the same time a thermoscope and a magnet.

    COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 Alexander von Humboldt 1814

  • Wallis, I., and I. Beale, 1669: Some observations concerning the baroscope and thermoscope, made and communicated by Doctor I. Wallis at

    The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com Kevin Grandia 2010

  • The history of Galileo thermometer goes back to the 1600's when this glass Galileo thermometer was created and based on a thermoscope invented by Galileo Galilei.

    Random feeds from Syndic8.com 2009

  • Later, he constructed the thermoscope, a device which brought him the highest scientific accolade in the country - election to the Royal Society.

    unknown title TechoutReach 2009

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