Gabriel Fahrenheit

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit was the son of Daniel and Concordia Schumann Fahrenheit. He was born in Danzig, Germany in 1686. He is best known for creating the Fahenheit scale and first reliable thermometers. Since he never married he produced no offsprings. After his parents, oddly enough, died on the same day, he was sent to Amsterdam to work for and learn from a shopkeeper for four years. He then realized that he had an interest for making scientific instruments. He traveled greatly, spending a considerable amount of time in England where he became a member of the Royal Society. Based on the work the work of Olaus Roemer, he made his first two thermometers. His first thermometers were made from alcohol which he later changed to mercury. He made the discovery that the boiling point of water changes at different atmospheric pressures. He also discovered and studied supercooling a liquid. Reseach on boiling anfd freezing led him to believe that the boiling and freezing points of water were unreliable. He made the Fahrenheit scale form 0 to 212. He made 0 the temperature of a mixture of water, salt and ice. He made 32 as the freezing point of water, and 212 as the boiling point of water. He died in 1736 in The Hague, Amsterdam at the age of fifty.