When people in the office talk about temperature sensors they are almost certainly talking about part of a car emission control system. The engine control system adjusts the fuel and air-flow to the combustion chambers of an internal combustion engine depending on its temperature. If the temperature sensor is faulty, then the engine will not run correctly, if it runs at all.
Older drivers may remember the manual choke control that you pulled out to start the engine when it was cold, and how this was superseded by the automatic choke. Somehow the manual choke never went wrong, unlike its new and allegedly better replacement.
Temperature sensors are one of the most frequently replaced parts in an automobile.
Temperature sensors away from the world of motoring are designed to measure the temperature at different stages of a chemical or other industrial process and feed back that data to a control center. Pyrometers are specialist temperature measuring devices with a very fast response time and a very high operating temperature range.
Pyrometers may have a response time as low as 5 milliseconds and can measure the temperature without contact with the...