Spiral Thermometer, Replica

A replica of a glass thermometer made in Florence in the mid-17th Century. This type of thermometer was built "rather for the eccentricity and for the curiosity of seeing the water run the dozens of degrees, moved by the simple closeness of breath, than for determining correct and infallible proportions of heat and cold."

Galileo built one of the earliest devices to measure how air density changes temperature. He was one of the first scientists to use what we now refer to as the "scientific method" in which observation of phenomena are subject to further data collection and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.