Montour American. (Danville, Pa.) 1866-1920, 1908-01-09
THE THERM o METER.
it Was Invented by a Poor Man Who
Had Failed as a Merchant.

- Seo tHNCHkGO OJ FOOT Ndn VINO
Had Failed as Merchant.
There is one little instrument in
which the interest of all classes of
people in this country never diminishes
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-
tions turn. And this little instrument
y the thermometer, which bears the,
name of Fahrenheit
Before the seventeenth century men,
could cnly judge of the amount of heat
prevailing at any place by their per-
sonal sensations and could only speak
of the weather in a very indefinite,
way as hot or very hot, cold or very
cold. In that century several attempts
We're made by scientific eXperimenteFs5 .
by means Of tubes containing oil. splr-.
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.
1t was reserved to Gabriel Daniel
Fahrenheit, an obscure and poor man,
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 n merchant
and, having a taste for mechanics andt
chemistry hn11n a GnriaC of ri
ments for the production of thermome-,
ters. At first he made these instru-,
ments with alcohol, but soon becamel
convinced that the semisolid mercuryt
was more suitable article to use in
the glass tube.
Fahrenheit had removed from Dant-
zig to Amsterdam, and there about the.
year 1I2O he made the mercury Their
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 hadt
resulted therefrom.
Celsius of Stockholm soon after sug-,
gested the more rational graduation of
hundred degrees between freezing,
grade thermometer Reaumur propos-
ed another graduation which has been.
accepted by the French, but by far the
largest part of the civilized world
Fahrenheit's scale has been accepted.
and used, with 81 degrees as freezing,
30 degrees as temperate. 96 degrees as,
blood heat and 2l2 degrees as boiling
point
1t is true that the zero of Fahren-
heit's scale is Il solccism since it does
not mark the extreme TO which heat
can be distracted. 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 artificially 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.