A facility is described for the automatic recording of expansion and contraction over the temperature range −150 to +1500°C. It is primarily intended for broad exploration of the thermal behavior of new experimental materials with the principal objective of detecting and identifying phenomenological effects rather than of attaining the ultimate in accuracy. Particular features of this model include automatic operation, hence minimum amount of attention in performing the measurement, magnification of the temperature scale, scale range and scale zero adjustment, exploration of thermal expansion through ambient without interruption employing a gaseous heat carrier for temperature control, compensation for sample length in both expansion and sintering measurements to provide an apparent constant length of 100 mm, irrespective of sample length, within the limits of 30 to 55 mm, and time recordings on the soak phase of the sintering trace. No commercial equipment is known to the author which provides this flexibility. Based upon numerous calibrations the uncertainty in the accuracy of the expansion measurement, due to systematic and random errors in the procedure and in practicing the technique, is not greater than 7.5% up to 1000°C, over the magnification ranges. The broad usefulness of this tool is exemplified by its adaptability in the display of such information as (1) expansion of a wide variety of solids, (2) transformation ranges and softening points of glasses, (3) structural modifications in crystalline materials, (4) thermal hysteretic phenomena, (5) stress relaxation, and (6) sintering kinetics and shrinkage in controlled atmospheres.