Thermometer Designs
At the current time, groups must be no larger than 6 people, and booked through the University of Cambridge ticketing system.
Opening hours
Wednesdays and Fridays, 12.30 to 14.30 or 15.00 to 17.00.
Admission charge
Free admission. Donations are welcomes
Accompanying adults
Any groups of visitors under the age of 18 must be accompanied by a minimum ratio of 1 adult to every 10 children.
Arrival
Groups should enter the museum through the step-free entrance to the rear of the museum. This can be accessed through the entrance to the New Museums Site on Downing Street (turning left at the Museum of Zoology and then left again). Please ring the doorbell to be admitted.
Facilities
The nearest public toilets are at the Lion Yard shopping centre. Facilities for storing coats and bags are limited as there is no lockable storage. Unfortunately the museum does not have a space in which groups can consume food or drink.
Accessibility
Donations welcome
Admission and all educational activities are free of charge, but donations are welcome to help contribute to our costs. Our suggested donation for educational groups is £1 per student.
Donations can be given in person at the museum by cash or cheque. Cheques should be made payable to the "University of Cambridge". Unfortunately change cannot be given for cash donations. A receipt can be provided on request.
You can also donate online.
A University Museum
Please be aware that the Whipple Museum is part of a working University teaching department. When entering and exiting the museum please be considerate to staff and students who may be working close by, and keep noise and disturbance to a minimum.
John Cuff, an instrument maker, and Henry Baker, a prominent natural philosopher, worked together and drew on each other's skills to change microscope design decisively in the mid-18th century. These changes are represented in five Cuff instruments held at the Whipple.
Maximum and minimum thermometers
In 1790, Professor Daniel Rutherford (1749-1819) invented maximum and minimum thermometers as a way of recording the highest and lowest temperature recorded over a certain timespan. Both instruments were simple bulb thermometers set, one above another, on a single frame.
An ivory index inside the thermometer tube marked the highest or lowest level of the liquids. In the case of the minimum thermometer, spirit was used, and for the maximum gauge mercury was employed. Rutherford's design was soon improved, as mercury tended to leak beyond the maximum index. A blued steel index in the shape of a dumbbell replaced the original ivory marker.
These minimum and maximum thermometers (Image 1 and Image 2) were made by Walter E. Pain (c. 1836-c. 1909), who lived on Sidney Street in Cambridge and was elected Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society in 1864. Pain monitored the temperature of Cambridge and its vicinity and produced reports for the Meteorological Society.
Deformation thermometers
Bimetallic or deformation thermometers depended on different expansion rates of two metal strips set into a curl. As the temperature changed, the curvature of the metal curls also changed and moved a pointer along a marked temperature scale (Image 3).
It remains unclear when bimetallic technology began to be applied to thermometry. An early description of an English bimetallic strip of copper and iron was mentioned by Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728-1777) in his Pyrometrie oder vom Maße Feuers und der Wärme (1779). In 1767, the American astronomer and mathematician David Rittenhouse (1732-1796) described a pocket thermometer that contained a bimetallic mechanism.
The invention of the trimetallic thermometer is generally attributed to the horologist Abraham Louis Bréguet (1747-1823) who used a helical tri-metallic strip, made of platinum, silver, and gold, to produce a very sensitive thermometer. Unfortunately, the mechanism in this particular thermometer was too delicate for meteorological work, since even a small breeze upsets the instrument, and it therefore served principally as a display of Bréguet's excellent craftsmanship. The bimetallic thermometer pictured on the right was made by Bréguet and also uses a helical strip.
Allison Ksiazkiewicz
Allison Ksiazkiewicz, 'Thermometer designs', Explore Whipple Collections, Whipple Museum of the History of Science, University of Cambridge.