We’ll begin with a pseudo-scientific joke: “In 2006, the entire scientific world celebrated the 320th anniversary of Fahrenheit's birth. Or, using a different scale, the 160th anniversary of Celsius’s birth. And Réaumur in such a case should turn 128 years old.” The joke – as one might understood – refers to different temperature scales.
The son of a Danzig merchant was not interested in the science of selling but rather in natural sciences. He was fond of carrying out scientific experiments and so he designed a thermometer and a barometer.
The winter of 1709 was bitterly cold. That is why, sources now tell us, Fahrenheit took the temperature of about minus eighteen degrees Celsius for the zero point on his scale. This is why the temperature at which ice melts corresponds to thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit. The boiling point of the water at normal atmospheric pressure is two hundred and twelve degrees. Gabriel Fahrenheit was going to accept the temperature of the human body for the hundred-degree mark. But it turned out later he was a few degrees off: the normal temperature of the human body corresponds to ninety-seven and nine-tenths degrees Fahrenheit.
