History
In 1732, Delisle built a thermometer that used mercury as a working fluid. Delisle chose his scale using the temperature of boiling water as the fixed zero point and measured the contraction of the mercury (with lower temperatures) in hundred-thousandths. Delisle thermometers usually had 2400 or 2700 graduations, appropriate to the winter in St. Petersburg, as he had been invited by Peter the Great to St. Petersburg to found an observatory in 1725. In 1738, Josias Weitbrecht (1702–47) recalibrated the Delisle thermometer with two fixed points, keeping 0 degrees as the boiling point and adding 150 degrees as the freezing point of water. He then sent this calibrated thermometer to various scholars, including Anders Celsius. The Celsius scale, like the Delisle scale, originally ran from zero for boiling water down to 100 for freezing water. This was reversed to its modern order after his death, in part at the instigation of Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus and the manufacturer of Linnaeus thermometers, Daniel Ekström.
The Delisle thermometer remained in use for almost 100 years in Russia.
Read more about this topic: Delisle Scale
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I cannot be much pleased without an appearance of truth; at least of possibility—I wish the history to be natural though the sentiments are refined; and the characters to be probable, though their behaviour is excelling.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)
“I saw the Arab map.
It resembled a mare shuffling on,
dragging its history like saddlebags,
nearing its tomb and the pitch of hell.”
—Adonis [Ali Ahmed Said] (b. 1930)
“We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. However, the two sides are not to be divided off; as long as men exist the history of nature and the history of men are mutually conditioned.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)