Alcohol thermometer to give a background for reading the scale. The range of usefulness of the thermometer is set by the boiling point of the liquid used. In the case of the ethanol-filled thermometer, the upper limit for measurement is 78 °C (172.4 °F), which makes it useful for measuring daytime, nighttime and body temperatures, although not for anything much hotter than these. Ethanol-filled thermometers are used in preference to mercury for meteorological measurements of minimum temperatures and can be used down to −70 °C (-94 °F). The physical limitation of the ability of a thermometer to measure low temperature is the
Delisle scale of Linnaeus thermometers, Daniel Ekström. The Delisle thermometer remained in use for almost 100 years in Russia. One of its users was Mikhail Lomonosov, who reversed it, as Jean-Pierre Christin did with Celsius' scale, making the freezing point of water 0 °D and the boiling point 150 °D. Delisle scale The Delisle scale (°D) is a temperature scale invented in 1732 by the French astronomer Joseph-Nicolas Delisle (1688–1768). Delisle was the author of "Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire et aux progrès de l'Astronomie, de la Géographie et de la Physique" (1738). In 1732, Delisle built a thermometer that used mercury