Between 1663 and 1665, Robert Hooke designed a thermometer for the Royal Society which served as a standard for the graduation of other seventeenth-century instruments. This paper describes the construction and scale of the standard, the use of Hooke's scale in meteorological diaries of the period 1669 to 1709, and its modification by Francis Hauksbee, the Younger, in the early eighteenth century. It includes a suggestion for interpretation of the barometric observations in Hooke's Guildhall diary. It points out the influence of the Royal Society's meteorological observations in the age of Fahrenheit, Réaumur, and Celsius.
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© 1951 American Association of Physics Teachers.
1951
American Association of Physics Teachers
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