Today in Technology History
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November 7
Today, we discuss a man who has been called "one of the great benefactors of humanity": the inventor of the thermostat. Chances are, you've never heard of him.
Cornelis Jacobszoon Drebbel was born in 1572 in Alkmaar, Holland. He studied glasswork and engraving, painting and mapmaking. He eventually took an interest in science -- or, rather, in the sort of alchemy and natural magic that then passed for science.
Drebbel, whose name is sometimes written as Cornelius van Drebel, invented new kinds of dyes and microscopes. He served as a court scientist for King James in England, where Drebbel built the world's first real submarine. We'll have to return to that subject another time, however, since our focus today is Drebbel's thermostat.
The world's first thermostat was apparently used by Drebbel to regulate the temperature of an oven or boiler. It worked on the same basic principle as the thermometer, which had recently been invented (or reinvented, really) by Galileo. Sitting next to the oven was a container filled with a certain liquid, probably mercury. A buoyant float was on top of the liquid, and the float was connected to rods and levers that controlled the oven's damper. When the temperature got too hot, the mercury level rose, carrying the float up -- which moved the levers and shut the damper, thus decreasing the airflow, subduing the fire, and lowering the temperature.
Drebbel also used a similar thermostat to keep the temperature constant in a chicken incubator. Instead of using the incubator for hatching eggs, though, some sources say that Drebbel used it for an alchemical attempt to turn lead into gold. He died, by the way, on November 7, 1633.
Today's small thermostats for governing indoor temperatures are direct descendents of Drebbel's invention, even though new thermostats use electricity instead of levers, and usually use thin strips of metal instead of mercury. The rise of devices that use feedback to make "decisions" has led some philosophers to wonder whether thermostats have a rudimentary kind of consciousness -- but we'll have to leave that subject for another day.
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