Norm Thompson Outfitters, Inc.

Bathrobes have been a wardrobe staple—as well as a catalog staple—for years. There are few people who don’t like cuddling up in a warm, soft robe after a hot shower, or coming downstairs for their morning cup of coffee wrapped in their favorite terry cloth robe. Robes are an ever-popular gift item, evidenced by the number of holiday and gift catalogs that featured them this past winter. The Norm Thompson gift catalog, Sundance gifts, Talbots gift collection, the Lands’ End holiday catalog and the Cuddledown of Maine holiday catalog are just a few of the books that presented robes as wonderful gift ideas.

At the turn of the 17th century, Italian inventor Galileo Galilei discovered that a change in temperature affects the buoyancy of liquid, giving rise to the invention of a crude thermometer. Fast forward about 400 years, and Galileo's "thermoscope" is now available to the masses, sold as a work of art and science to grace our homes and offices. Today's version consists of a clear glass cylinder, filled with a clear, temperature-sensitive liquid and glass globes filled with colored liquids, each with a numbered tag to display the temperature. Galileo's thermometer is difficult to describe, let alone image, in a catalog. Following,