September 16, 1736 - Death of Daniel Fahrenheit, designed the famous scale and invented the mercury thermometer

After the death of his parents after eating poisonous mushrooms, at the age of 15, he made study trips to Germany, England, and Denmark where in 1708 he met Ole Rømer (the first person to determine the speed of light). He later settled in Amsterdam, at that time one of the main manufacturing centers for scientific instruments, where he worked as a glass blower and began to develop precision instruments creating the water (1709) and mercury (1714) thermometers.

In 1717, he published "Acta Editorum" in which he proposed a new thermometric scale that bore his name. It was designed using a mixture of water and ammonium chloride salt in equal parts as a reference. The freezing value of that mixture he called 0°F (degrees Fahrenheit), his body temperature was 96°F, and the freezing temperature of water without salts, was 32°F. In particular, 212°F corresponds to 100°C, so the relationship between them is:

The reason for assigning the body temperature the value of 96 was so that between zero and that value there would be a scale formed by a dozen divisions, each of them subdivided into eight parts, that is, 12 x 8 = 96.

Consequently, by covering a wider interval, the Fahrenheit scale allows greater precision than the centigrade (later designed by Anders Celsius) when defining a specific temperature.

This scale is the most widely used in the United States and until very recently in the United Kingdom (which currently uses the metric system).

If you want to know more about this scientist, click on the following link: Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit