Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1875-05-06
The History of Zero.

"ZERo," on the common thermometer,
like the fanciful names of the constella-
tons, is curious instance of the way
wise mems errors are made immortal by
becoming popular. 1t may be worth
while to say that the word itself (zero)
comes to us through the Spanish from
the Arabic, and means empty, hence
nothing. In expressions like $50 deg.
Fahr.," the abbreviation, Fair, stands
for Fahrenheit, a Prussian merchant of
Dantzic, on the shores of the Baltic Sea-
His full name was Gabriel Daniel Fab
renheit
From boy he was close observer of
nature, and when only nineteen years
old, in the remarkably cold winter of
1909, he experimental by putting snow
and salt together and noticed that it pro-
duced degree of cold equal to the cold
est day of that year AS that day was
the coolest that the oldest inhabitant
could remember, Gabriel was the more
struck with the coincidence of his little
scientific discovery, and hastily con-
cluded that he had found the lowest
degree of temperature known in the
world, either natural or artificial. He
called that degree zero, and constructed
thermometer, or rude weather-glass,
with scale graduated up from the zero
to boiling point, which he numbered 212
and the freezing point 32-because, as
he thought, mercury contracted the
thirty-second Of its volume on being
cooled down from the temperature of
freezing water to zero; and expanded
100th on being heated from the freezing
to the boiling point.
Time showed that this arrangement,
instead of being truly scientific, was as
arbitrary as the division of the Bible into
verses and chapters, and that these two
points no more represented the real ex-
tremes of temperature than from Dan
to Beersheba" expressed the exact ex-
tremes of Palestine.
But Fahrenheit's thermometer had
been widely adopted with its inconven-
lent scale; and none thought of any bet
ter until his name became an authority,
for Fahrenheit finally abandoned trade
and gave himselfto science. Then habit
made people cling to the established
scale, as habit makes the English cling to
the old system of cumbrous fractional
money.
Our nation began to use Fahrenheit's
thermometer about the middle of the
last century, or not far from the time
when old style was exchanged for new
style in the writing of dates
The three countries which use Fab
renheit are Holland, England, and
America. Russia and Germany use
Reaumer's thermometer, in which the
boiling point is counted so deg. above
freezing point France uses the cent?
grade thermometer, SO called because it
marks the boiling point 100 deg. from
freezing point.
On many accounts the centigrade sys-
tenn is the best, and the triumph of con-
venience will be attained when zero is
made the freezing point, and when the
boiling point is put 100 or 1000 deg.
from it, and all the subdivisions are fixed
decinlaily.
If Fahrenheit had done this at first, or
even if he had made it one of his MANY
improvements, after the public adopted
his error, the luck of opportunity, which
was really his, would have secured to his
invention the patronage Of the world
Christian A010cGte.
STATUTE OF LIMITATIoNs-Th act of