The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1875-05-07
The History of Zero.

Zero, on the common thermom-
eter, like the fanciful names of the con-
stellations, is curious instance of the
way wise mems errors are made immor-
tai 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, Fahr., stands
for Fahrenheit, Prussian merchant of
Dantzic, on the shores of the Baltic Sea.
His full name was Gabriel Daniel
Fahrenheit.
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 tpro-
duced degree of cold equal to the cold
est day of that year. AS that day was
the coldest 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 de-
gree of temperature known in the world,
either natural or artificial He called
that degree zero, and constructed a
thermometer, or rude weather glass,
with scale graduated up from the zero
to boiling-point, which he numbered
90. and the freezing-point thirty-two.
Because, as he thought, mercury con-
tracted the thirty-second of its volume
on being cooled down from the tempera-
ture of freezing water to zero; and expand
ed 1S0th on being heated from the freez-
ing to the boiling point.
Time showed that this arrangement,
instead of being truly scientific, was as
arbitrary as the division of the Bible in
to verses and chapters, and that these
two points no more represented the real
extremes of temperature, than =" from
Dan to Beersheba " expressed the exact
extremes of Palestine.
But Farenheit's s thermometer had been
largely adopted, with its inconvenient
scale and none thought of any better
until his name became an authority, for
Fahrenheit finally abandoned trade and
gave himself TO science. Then habit
made people cling to the established
scale, as habit makes the English cling
to their old system of cumbrous frac-
tional 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 Fahren-
heit are Holland, England and America.
Russia and Germany use Reaumer's ther-
mometer, in which the boiling point is
counted 80 degrees above freezing point.
France uses the centrigrade thermome-
ter, so called because it marks the boil
ing point 100 degrees 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 degrees
from it, and all the subdivisions are fixed
decimally.
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
North ChTistianAdUOcate.