Friday, March 30, 2012

Cold Days


‘Monday 30 March 1663

Up betimes and found my weather-glass sunk again just to the same position which it was last night before I had any fire made in my chamber, which had made it rise in two hours time above half a degree…’

Samuel Pepys used a weather-glass, as he records in his diary, which was largely developed within the century Pepys lived in (17th).  By Walter Scott’s time, the term thermometer, first introduced in 1624, was in common use.  Scott commented on the temperature more than once in his journal, including this entry:

January 15 [1826]--Like yesterday, a hard frost. Thermometer at 10; water in
my dressing-room frozen to flint; yet I had a fine walk yesterday, the
sun dancing delightfully on "grim Nature's visage hoar."

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