Anders Celsius Thermometer

by Courtney Adamen
(Auburn Maine)

Have a look at this old photograph. This is showing a scientist's creation that he created 5 years before he died.

Barry's Response - He was an astronomer in Sweden who lived from 1701 to 1744. He became well-known for starting the Uppsala Astronomical Observatory, and even more so for coming up with the Celsius temperature scale, which is shown on the thermometer above.

Temperature scales have normally been defined by picking two points of interest, comparing their temperatures and sub-dividing it go get the scale. Any two will do. Body temperature or anything else that is consistent. That may have been a little more difficult to find.

It's better to have two temperatures that are further apart for defining the scale, rather than too similar. The idea of using the boiling and freezing points of water may seem a little obvious now but that probably wasn't always the case. They are not perfectly consistent, but the the greatest contribution from Celsius himself was finding a way to make them usable.

Actually, the scale he invented had zero for boiling and 100 for freezing (for water). Celsius also noted that while he could determine the variations in the boiling point of water, dependent on ambient pressure, the freezing point did not vary significantly at all.

Meanwhile another scientist, Jean-Pierre Christin, came up with zero for freezing and 100 for boiling and had a matching thermometer designed.

More details can be found on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Celsius

Thank you for this inspiration, Courtney.

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