It is shown that the heated body temperature can be measured from the energy distribution of photoelectrons appearing in the photoelectric device which serves simultaneously as detector and analyser of the body radiation spectrum. The effective wavelengths of this temperature measuring technique cannot be chosen arbitrarily because they are functions of the temperature and must be measured. A technique for measuring the series of values of the effective wavelengths λ r (T ), which is necessary for estimation of the procedural error T ph , has been proposed. The latter depends on the type of spectral characteristic of the photodetector, the energy photoelectron dispersion D in a retarding field and the emissivity of a heated surface ε(λ, T ). The formulae for the procedural error calculation are obtained and the latter has been shown to be less than that for measuring the temperature by conventional optical pyrometry methods and almost independent of temperature; T ph ≈ 2-3 K for tungsten (when T = 1200-2600 K) and T ph ≈ 3-5 K for platinum (when T = 1200-1800 K). The calculated results have been proved by series of experiments. A photoemissive pyrometer based on this method can be employed for temperature measurements when the exact meaning of a changeable emissivity is unknown as it takes place, for example, at pulse heating processes.