Fahrenheit decided to define the lowest possible temperature as 0° to avoid negative temperature, and the normal body temperatur of humans as 12°. Yes, he lived pre-metric times. Of course he soon realized that these big jumps of the 12° scale were pretty unusable, so he redefined an 1/8^th° of his first draft as the steps of his final scale. I don’t know whether he lived to realize that the coldest temperature he could achieve in his lab was not the coldest temperature possible. Oh, and he got the body temperature slightly wrong. Still pretty impressive achivement for 1708.
Somehow I’m a bit sad he didn’t keep the 12° scale. Just imagine Americans would have to take fever like: “the patient has 12⅞ °F”.
Fahrenheit decided to define the lowest possible temperature as 0° to avoid negative temperature, and the normal body temperatur of humans as 12°. Yes, he lived pre-metric times. Of course he soon realized that these big jumps of the 12° scale were pretty unusable, so he redefined an 1/8^th° of his first draft as the steps of his final scale. I don’t know whether he lived to realize that the coldest temperature he could achieve in his lab was not the coldest temperature possible. Oh, and he got the body temperature slightly wrong. Still pretty impressive achivement for 1708.
Somehow I’m a bit sad he didn’t keep the 12° scale. Just imagine Americans would have to take fever like: “the patient has 12⅞ °F”.