THE FIRST THERMOMETER.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 23, 28 January 1928, Page 13 (Supplement)

THE FIRST THERMOMETER.

FINDING FREEZING POINT.

Had a Danzig merchant not failed in business and had to look about him for a new means of earning a it is possible that to-day we should still be referring to the weather as hot or very hot; cold or very cold. In short, we may have had no means of measuring the degrees of heat or coolness. . The merchant who found business declining was Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit, who, always, having - had .a taste for chemistry, turned his attention to the making of a, thermometer. Before he died on September 16, 1740, he had the satisfaction of seeing his instruments in use in most parts of the world. Fahrenheit- irtade his first thermometers with spirits> of wine, but before long, he became convinced that mercury, was a more suitable article to be put in the tubes. Finding Danzig a too narrow field for his business, he removed to Amsterdam, where he completed the! arrangement for his mercury thermometer. Well-deserved Reward. The basis- of his plan was to mark on the tube the points at which water is congealed and boiled, and to graduate the space between. Between these two points he put in 180 degrees (that being half the number of degrees in a circle), beginning, however, with 32 degrees, because he found that mercury descended 32 degrees more before coming to what he thought the extreme cold resulting from a mixture of ice, water, and sal ammoniac. The Royal Society received the accounts of his experiments, acknowledged their value by making him a member, and adopted his thermometer. Though Celsius of Stockholm soon after suggested 100 degrees between freezing and boiling points (now known as the Centigrade thermometer), and Reaumur, the Frenchman, a graduation based on 80 degrees, which has been accepted in France, tie Fahrenheit scale is the one most generally used.