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
Beckmann thermometer (R on diagram) at the upper end of the tube, by means of which the quantity of mercury in the bulb can be increased or diminished so that the instrument can be set to measure temperature differences at either high or low temperature values. In contrast, the range of a typical mercury-in-glass thermometer is fixed, being set by the calibration marks etched on the glass or the marks on the printed scale. In setting the thermometer, a sufficient amount of mercury must be left in the bulb and stem to give readings between the required temperatures. First, the thermometer is