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The problem with Celcius is I can never remember if it is Celcius or Centigrade!
That, and it is just to sterile and without character.
Gabriel Fahrenheit - there was a real scientist, not some Frog bueraucrat!
He took as his zero point the lowest temperature he measured in the harsh winter of 1708 through 1709 in his home town of Gdañsk (Danzig). (He was later able to reach this temperature under laboratory conditions using a mixture of ice, ammonium chloride and water.) Fahrenheit wanted to avoid the negative temperatures which Ole Romer's scale had produced in everyday use. Fahrenheit fixed his own body temperature as 100 °F (normal body temperature is closer to 98.6 °F, suggesting that Fahrenheit was suffering a fever when he conducted his experiments or that his thermometer was not very accurate), and divided his original scale into twelve divisions; later dividing each of these into 8 equal subdivisions produced a scale of 96 degrees. Fahrenheit noted that his scale placed the freezing point of water at 32 °F and the boiling point at 212 °F, a neat 180 degrees apart.
Celcius, on the other hand, merely uses water in standard conditions to establish the scale. Where is the story in THAT? Only the French would be impressed.
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Tom
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