Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit was born May 24, 1686 Fahrenheit spent most of his life in the Netherlands, where he devoted himself to the study of physics. He was only fifteen when his parents both died from eating poisonous mushrooms. The city council put the four young Fahrenheit children in foster homes, and apprenticed Fahrenheit to a merchant. Said merchant taught Fahrenheit bookkeeping and took him to Amsterdam. Amsterdam is where Fahrenheit was first introduced to thermometers. But unlike the thermometers he would make later in his life that were quite versatile about how they recorded temperatures. The first thermometers he saw were only used to record the coldest and hottest days of the year. For seven years Fahrenheit worked out a scale measurement of temperature measurement based on three points, the freezing point of an equal mixture of salt, water, and ice, the freezing point of water, and the boiling point of water. This was not the first temperature scale created. Later Fahrenheit would meet Olaus Roemer, one of the supposed inventors of the alcohol thermometer (no one knows who was the first to invent the Alcohol thermometer). Fahrenheit would modify Roemer's design and make his famous mercury thermometer. For Fahrenheit knew mercury and alcohol were two of the only materials that could record temperatures accurately and consistently, for they could survive under the extreme conditions without freezing. But alcohol did evaporate when it got too hot this is when Fahrenheit realized mercury was the best fit for it did not freeze nor evaporate. Fahrenheit died September 16, 1736, his contributions to the fields of medicine and meteorology are what allow us to do a lot of what we do in said fields today.