On September 16, 1736, the German physicist Gabriel Fahrenheit died in The Hague; He is 50 years old. He was born in Danzig, but lives and works in Amsterdam. There he made the first easy-to-read thermometer in 1714. His “Fahrenheit scale” was common in Europe for a long time and is still in use in the United States. In our country, it was replaced by the Celsius temperature scale, named after the Swedish astronomer Anders Högen (1701-1744), better known by the Latin name Anders Celsius.
Fahrenheit’s parents die early, probably from eating poisonous mushrooms. Then, at the insistence of his guardian, Fahrenheit begins an apprenticeship as a merchant in Amsterdam. From 1707 he travels to Danzig, Dresden, Leipzig and Berlin.
In 1717, Fahrenheit settled in Amsterdam as a glassblower to manufacture and sell barometers, altimeters and thermometers. He worked in the Keizersgracht, where the Russian Tsar Peter the Great visits him. From 1718 he gave lectures on chemistry, optics and hydraulics at home. He was appointed a “Member” of the Royal Society of London in 1724.
Fahrenheit develops accurate thermometers with 3-point calibration (Fahrenheit scale) and thus starts the temperature measurement. At first he used alcohol as a thermometer, but from 1714 he also used mercury. So he invented the mercury thermometer. It already existed, but Fahrenheit makes it precise and universally applicable. As the zero point of his scale, he uses the lowest temperature he can reach with an icy mixture of ice and salt: −17.8 °C.
In 1721 he discovered that water could be cooled considerably below freezing without freezing. This is called “supercooled water”. Gabriel Fahrenheit also builds a hydrometer (which measures the density of liquids), a pycnometer (for determining the specific gravity of liquids), and a hypsobarometer (which can measure altitude). While visiting The Hague to apply for a patent for a pump in 1736, Gabriel Fahrenheit fell ill and died.
The Fahrenheit scale was also common in Europe in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Only with the introduction of the metric system in the middle of the 19th century did the Celsius scale become common in continental Europe. In Great Britain, the Fahrenheit scale remains in use longer. The metric system is officially adopted in Great Britain after it joined the European Single Market in 1993. The Fahrenheit scale is now officially used only in the United States, Belize, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands and Liberia.
For the sake of anecdote, Fahrenheit and Celsius are both cryptocurrency company names. Fahrenheit wins here because Celsius filed for bankruptcy in 2023.