Wedgwood pyrometer
Pirómetro de Wedgwood
- Date
- 1782 · confidence high
- Place
- Etruria, Stoke-on-Trent, England, United Kingdom
- Credited to
- Josiah Wedgwood
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
Clay cylinders that shrink in proportion to the furnace temperature and are compared in a graduated groove, to measure temperatures above what thermometers can reach. It was the first useful pyrometer in ceramics.
Wedgwood was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for this device (1783). His scale proved unreliable (the correspondence with °C was miscalculated) and was soon abandoned.
What it led to
- firing control in industrial ceramics
- the first high-temperature scale (Wedgwood degrees)
- shrinkage pyrometers and pyrometric cones (Seger)