Engaged - nonfiction

Galileo was a philosopher with a talent for inventing instruments for research. He hired a skilled workman to test his devices, and one of his earliest inventions was the thermometer in 1602. It used water to measure temperature based on its expansion. Like many other philosophers who have greatly extended our knowledge of nature, Galileo had a remarkable aptitude for the invention of instruments designed for philosophical research. We find that in 1599 he had engaged a skilled workman who was to live in his house and be constantly at hand to try the devices, which were forever springing from Galileo's fertile brain. Among the earliest of his inventions appears to have been the thermometer, which he constructed in 1602. No doubt this apparatus, in its primitive form, differed in some respects from the contrivance we call by the same name. Galileo at first employed water as the agent. Its expansion was the basis of the measurement of temperature.