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Who invented the thermometer?

While the Greeks made simple thermometers (instruments for measuring temperature) as early as the first century B.C., Italian astronomer (a scientists specializing in the study of the stars, planets, and heavenly bodies) Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) is credited with inventing the modern thermometer. Called an air thermometer, it was a device in which a colored liquid was driven down by the expansion of air. As the air got warmer and expanded, the liquid dropped. In 1612 Italian physician Santorio Santorio (1561–1636), a friend of Galileo, adapted the device to measure the body's change in temperature due to illness. A century later, in 1714, German physicist Daniel Fahrenheit (1686–1736) invented the mercury (a metallic element) thermometer. Thermometers in use today, contain liquid mercury, which rises as it gets warmer.

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