We like to refer to the two temperature scales for batteries in our blog, because we have a global audience. Although only a few countries still use fahrenheit nowadays, including United States, Bahamas, Belize, Cayman Islands, Liberia, and Palau.
Today we dive down into the question of how this dual system came about. We discover that both emerged during the eighteenth century, although from different European scientific traditions.
Origin of the Fahrenheit Temperature Scale
A Polish fellow named Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit created the first of our two temperature scales that we use for batteries, in the early eighteenth century. He was a physicist, an inventor, and a scientific instrument maker specializing in thermometers.
Clearly, Fahrenheit needed a reliable temperature scale he could trust, in the absence of an acceptable alternative. And so he developed his own system of measurement for the thermometers he made. This is how Fahrenheit’s system worked:
- He based it on two fixed reference points, where 32º was the freezing point of water, and 212º the boiling point.
- He divided the 180 degrees between these two extremes into 180 points. This system might have died with Fahrenheit, except for his thermometers.
- Fahrenheit went on to make very accurate mercury thermometers, in high demand in Britain and later the United States.
- The popularity of Fahrenheit’s temperature scale survived after him, because he embedded it in his fine thermometers.
Decimal Rules, Anders Celsius Decides
Anders Celsius was a Swedish astronomer, physicist and mathematician. He developed an alternative temperature scale also based on water, except this time he used a simple decimal system.
To his mind, 0º was the boiling point of water and 100º the freezing point. But other scientists found this illogical and reversed Celsius’s system. This is how 0º Celsius became the freezing point, and 100º the boiling point of water.
Opinions remain divided over which of the two temperature scales to use for batteries. Most countries adopted the Celsius system because it uses decimal metrics. A few other countries stayed with Fahrenheit, arguably because it became part of their way of life.
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