Irish Famine (1740–41) affect economies, energy sources, and politics. Although no barometric or temperature readings for Ireland survive from the Great Frost, a scattered few records survive from Englishmen who made personal readings. The mercury thermometer was invented 25 years earlier by the German pioneer Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit. Indoor values during January 1740 were as low as . The one outdoor reading that has survived was stated as "thirty-two degrees of frost." This did not include the effects of the wind chill factor, which would have been severe. This kind of weather was "quite outside the Irish experience," notes David Dickson, author of
Six's thermometer in the push-button type with the magnetic plate in place, there is a risk of damaging the weak magnet behind the scale, or magnetising the steel in the markers either weakening or enhancing the pulling force against the capillary tube on all or part of the scale so that the thermometer no longer works properly. The original Six's thermometer design contains mercury, which has been banned for most uses in the European Union and some other parts of the world. In 2006, S.Brannan & Sons Ltd, a UK company, was granted a patent for a mercury-free version of Six's maximum–minimum