Celsius Proposes His Temperature Scale
January 1, 1742
The Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius, observing water's reliable boiling and freezing, proposed a centigrade scale. His version ran backwards: zero for boiling, one hundred for freezing. After his death a colleague inverted it to the modern arrangement. Two Baltic Protestants had given the world its two competing thermometric languages within thirty years.
In context
Also in 1742 (3 other events on record)
- Handel's Messiah Premieres in Dublin · Europe · Culture
- Fall of Walpole · Europe · Politics
- Goldbach's Conjecture · Europe · Science
Before and after in Europe
Before and after in Science
Era
Enlightenment (1651–1800), one of 696 events from that era on Saeculum.
Sources