Medical thermometer and displaying temperature became available, electronic thermometers (often called "digital", because they display numeric values) have been used. Many display readings to great precision (0.1 °C or 0.2 °F, sometimes half that), but this should not be taken as a guarantee of accuracy: specified accuracy must be checked in documentation and maintained by periodical recalibration. A typical inexpensive electronic ear thermometer for home use has a displayed resolution of 0.1 °C, but a stated accuracy within ±0.2 °C (±0.35 °F) when new. The first electronic clinical thermometer, invented in 1954, used a flexible probe that contained a Carboloy thermistor. Types
Medical thermometer is less of a problem with a coloured liquid. In the 1990s it was decided that mercury-based thermometers were too risky to handle; the vigorous swinging needed to "reset" a mercury maximum thermometer makes it easy to accidentally break it and spill the moderately poisonous mercury. Mercury thermometers have largely been replaced by electronic digital thermometers, or, more rarely, thermometers based on liquids other than mercury (such as galinstan, coloured alcohols and heat-sensitive liquid crystals). Phase-change thermometers use samples of inert chemicals which melt at progressively higher temperatures from 35.5 °C to 40.5 °C in steps of 0.1 °C. They