Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit temperature scale to be widely used). In other words, Fahrenheit's inventions ushered in the first revolution in the history of thermometry (branch of physics concerned with methods of temperature measurement). From the early 1710s until the beginnings of the electronic era, mercury-in-glass thermometers were among the most reliable and accurate thermometers ever invented. Fahrenheit was born in the city of Danzig (Gdańsk), Pomeranian Voivodeship in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, but lived most of his life in the Dutch Republic. The Fahrenheits were a German Hanse merchant family who had lived in several Hanseatic cities. Fahrenheit's great-grandfather had lived in Rostock, and
Mercury-in-glass thermometer with fused quartz allows the upper temperature range to be extended to . Mercury cannot be used below the temperature at which it becomes solid, . If the thermometer contains nitrogen, the gas may flow down into the column when the mercury solidifies and be trapped there when the temperature rises, making the thermometer unusable until returned to the factory for reconditioning. To avoid this, some weather services require that all mercury-in-glass thermometers be brought indoors when the temperature falls to . To measure lower meteorological temperatures, a thermometer containing a mercury-thallium alloy which does not solidify until the temperature