Thermometer by Fahrenheit
Inv V10229, V10232

At the beginning of the eighteenth century the best thermometers came from the Amsterdam workshop of Daniel Fahrenheit. The celebrated Leiden professor Herman Boerhaave even praised them in his book Elementa chemiae of 1732 as the only usable thermometers for scientific research. Daniel Fahrenheit was born in Dantzig in present-day Poland and on his wanderings around Europe he learned the art of glass-blowing and calibrating thermometers. Eventually he became the finest craftsman of his age. In about 1718 he settled in Amsterdam and set up a workshop in which he made barometers, areometers and thermometers. That same year, in order to advertise, he presented several thermometers as a gift to such people as the professors Herman Boerhaave and Willem van 's Gravesande in Leiden. 's Gravesande's mercury thermometer has been preserved and you can see it here. The only other surviving thermometer by Fahrenheit is also to be found in Museum Boerhaave.