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 lower (for minimum) than already recorded, in which case the relevant marker is pushed further. The markers thus record the furthest point reached by the mercury in each arm of the tube, and thereby the highest and lowest temperatures since the last reset. Typically the thermometer is reset every 24 hours to measure the diurnal temperature variation, the positions of the ends of the markers nearest to the mercury are examined. Their positions on the maximum and minimum scales show the highest and lowest temperatures encountered since the last reset. In a variation of design, some models have unsprung markers