Keeping chickens warm since 1620

You can credit Dutchman Cornelius Jacobszoon Drebbel for coming up with the idea that eventually became the thermostat. Drebbel liked to tinker, and wealthy Englishmen liked to pay him for his tinkering. In 1620 he invented a mercury-filled device that could regulate the temperature of a poultry incubator. This was, in essence, a thermostat. For baby chickens.

Drebbel, by the way, lived a wild life. He was repeatedly summoned to Prague by the Holy Roman Emperor to show off his inventions. And each time he went, he was arrested after the emperor was deposed or defeated in battle. He spent more than a year in jail in Prague for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He also invented a 16-passenger submarine shortly after making his chicken thermostat.