One of the first attempts to make a standard temperature scale occurred about AD 170, when Galen, in his medical writings, proposed a standard "neutral" temperature made up of equal quantities of boiling water and ice; on either side of this temperature were four degrees of heat and four degrees of cold, respectively.

The earliest devices used to measure the temperature were called thermoscopes.

They consisted of a glass bulb having a long tube extending downward into a container of colored water, although Galileo in 1610 is supposed to have used wine. Some of the air in the bulb was expelled before placing it in the liquid, causing the liquid to rise into the tube. As the remaining air in the bulb was heated or cooled, the level of the liquid in the tube would vary reflecting the change in the air temperature. An engraved scale on the tube allowed for a quantitative measure of the fluctuations.

The air in the bulb is referred to as the thermometric medium, i.e. the medium whose property changes with temperature.

In 1641, the first sealed thermometer that used liquid rather than air as the thermometric medium was developed for Ferdinand II, Grand Duke of Tuscany. His thermometer used a sealed alcohol-in-glass device, with 50 "degree" marks on its stem but no "fixed point" was used to zero the scale. These were referred to as "spirit" thermometers.

Robert Hook, Curator of the Royal Society, in 1664 used a red dye in the alcohol . His scale, for which every degree represented an equal increment of volume equivalent to about 1/500 part of the volume of the thermometer liquid, needed only one fixed point. He selected the freezing point of water. By scaling it in this way, Hook showed that a standard scale could be established for thermometers of a variety of sizes. Hook's original thermometer became known as the standard of Gresham College and was used by the Royal Society until 1709. (The first intelligible meteorological records used this scale).