Bismarck daily tribune., 1908-01-17
THE Thermometer.
Il Was invented by Poor Man Who
Had Failed as Merchant.

It Was invented by Poor Man Who
Had Failed as Merchant.
There is one little instrument In
which the interest of all classes OF
people in this country never dilninlshes
through all the changing seasons of the
year. from the first day of January to
the last day of December. 1t regulates
the business pulse of the nation and Is
the shrine to which men of all occupa-
tons turn. And this little instrument
Is the thermometer, which bears the
name of Fahrenheit.
Before the seventeenth century men
could only judge of the amount of heat
prevailing at any place by their per-
sonal sensations and could only speak
Of the weather in very indefinite
way as hot or very hot, cold or very
cold. In that century several attempts
were made by scientific experimenters
by means of tubes containing oil, spir-
its of wine and other substances to es-
tablish satisfactory means of meas
uring heat, but none Of them proved
successful. Even Sir Isaac Newton,
who applied his great mind to this
work, and also the noted astronomer,
HALEY, failed in their attempts to pro-
duce heat measure.
It was reserved to Gabriel Daniel
Fahrenheit, an obscure and poor man,
a native of Dantzig, to give to the
world the instrument which has proved
to be SO serviceable to mankind. He
had failed in business as q merchant
and, having taste for mechanics and
chemistry, began series Of expert
ments for the production of thermome-
ters. At first he made these instru-
ments with alcohol, but soon became
convinced that the semisolid mercury
was a more suitable article to use in
the glass tube.
Fahrenheit had removed from Dant-
zig to Amsterdam, and there about the
year 172O he made the mercury ther-
mometer which has ever since been
fashioned much like the original.
The basis of his plan was to mark
on the tube the two points respectively
at which water is CONCEALED and boiled
and to graduate the space between.
He began with an arbitrary marking,
beginning with 80 degrees. because he
found that the mercury descended 80
degrees more before coming to what
he thought the extreme cold resulting
from mixture of ice, water and sal
ammoniac. In 1924 he published a dis
tinct treatise on the subject of his ex-
periments and the conclusions that had
resulted therefrom.
Celsius Of Stockholm soon after sug-
gested the more rational graduation Of
a hundred degrees between freezing
and boiling point. This was the cent?
grade Thermometer. Reaumur propos-
ed another graduation which has been
accepted by the French, but by far the
largest part of the civilized wor
Fahrenheit's scale has been accepted
and used, with 80 degrees as freezing,
55 degrees as temperate. 96 degrees as
blood heat and 212 degrees as boiling
point
/; 1t is true that the zero Of Fahren-
heit's scale is solecism since it does
not mark the extreme to which heat
can be abstracted. This little blemish.
however, does not seem to have been
Of any practical consequence.
Arctic explorers have persisted in de-
! scribing temperatures below the zero
Of Fahrenheit, and scientists have pro-
duced artifcially temperatures far be-
low any ever dreamed Of by the ther-
mometer maker Of Amsterdam. There
is doubt as to the year Of the death of
Fahrenheit, but it is generally placed
In 1740.-Los Angeles Times.