Thermoscope
Termoscopio
- Date
- c. 250 BCE · confidence low
- Place
- Alexandria, Egypt
- Credited to
- Philo of Byzantium
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
A device described by Philo of Byzantium that shows temperature changes through water rising and falling in a tube connected to an air-filled sphere, an ancient forerunner of the thermometer.
What it led to
- Reinvention of the thermoscope by Galileo around 1593
- Later development of the graduated thermometer
- Use of the same principle in ancient pneumatic automata