Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit | |
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Daniel Fahrenheit.
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Born | 24 May 1686 (in old British sources as 14 May Old Style) Danzig, (Gdańsk) Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth |
Died | Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist. The Hague, Netherlands |
Nationality | German |
Fields | Physics, thermometry |
Known for | Fahrenheit temperature scale, Fahrenheit hydrometer, first mercury-in-glass thermometer |
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Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (/ˈfærənˌhaɪt/; German: [ˈfaːʀənhait]; 24 May 1686 – 16 September 1736) was a German physicist, engineer, and glass blower who is best known for inventing the mercury-in-glass thermometer (1714), and for developing a temperature scale now named after him.[1]
Biography
Fahrenheit was born in 1686 in Danzig (Gdańsk), in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but lived most of his life in the Dutch Republic. The Fahrenheits were a German Hanse merchant family who had lived in several Hanseatic cities. Fahrenheit's great-grandfather had lived in Rostock, and research suggests that the Fahrenheit family originated in Hildesheim.[2] Daniel's grandfather moved from Kneiphof in Königsberg to Danzig and settled there as a merchant in 1650. His son, Daniel Fahrenheit (the father of the subject of this article), married Concordia Schumann, daughter of a well-known Danzig business family. Daniel was the eldest of the five Fahrenheit children (two sons, three daughters) who survived childhood. His sister, Virginia Elizabeth Fahrenheit, married Benjamin Ephraim Krueger of an aristocratic family from Danzig.[3]
Daniel Gabriel began training as a merchant in Amsterdam after his parents died on 14 August 1701 from eating poisonous mushrooms. However, Fahrenheit's interest in natural science led him to begin studies and experimentation in that field. From 1717, he traveled to Berlin, Halle, Leipzig, Dresden, Copenhagen, and also to his hometown, where his brother still lived. During that time, Fahrenheit met or was in contact with Ole Rømer, Christian Wolff, and Gottfried Leibniz. In 1717, Fahrenheit settled in The Hague as a glassblower, making barometers, altimeters, and thermometers. From 1718 onwards, he lectured in chemistry in Amsterdam. He visited England in 1724 and was the same year elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.[4] Fahrenheit died in The Hague and was buried there at the Kloosterkerk (Cloister Church).
In 2012, scientists made a computer image of his face using photos of his relatives.[5]
Fahrenheit scale
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According to Fahrenheit's 1724 article,[6][7] he determined his scale by reference to three fixed points of temperature. The lowest temperature was achieved by preparing a frigorific mixture of ice, water, and ammonium chloride (a salt), and waiting for it to reach equilibrium. The thermometer then was placed into the mixture and the liquid in the thermometer allowed to descend to its lowest point. The thermometer's reading there was taken as 0 °F. The second reference point was selected as the reading of the thermometer when it was placed in still water when ice was just forming on the surface.[8] This was assigned as 32 °F. The third calibration point, taken as 96 °F, was selected as the thermometer's reading when the instrument was placed under the arm or in the mouth.
Fahrenheit came up with the idea that mercury boils around 300 degrees on this temperature scale. Work by others showed that water boils about 180 degrees above its freezing point. The Fahrenheit scale later was redefined to make the freezing-to-boiling interval exactly 180 degrees,[6] a convenient value as 180 is a highly composite number, meaning that it is evenly divisible into many fractions. It is because of the scale's redefinition that normal body temperature today is taken as 98.2 degrees,[9] whereas it was 96 degrees on Fahrenheit's original scale.[10]
Until the switch to the Celsius scale,[when?] the Fahrenheit scale was widely used in Europe[citation needed]. It is still used for everyday temperature measurements by the general population in the United States.[11]
See also
References
- ↑ Encyclopedia Britannica "Science & Technology: Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit" [1]
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ See the Fahrenheit and Krueger genealogies.
- ↑ The Royal Society Archive catalogue
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Fahrenheit describes, in Latin, these numerical choices in the following paper: Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ For an early attempt to replace the Fahrenheit scale in the United States, see Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
Further reading
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- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. (Latin)
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- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. (Czech)
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- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. (Russian)
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External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit. |
- Letter from Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (scan) to Carl Linnaeus, 7 May 1736 n.s., [2] (German)
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Fahrenheit's papers in the Royal Society Publishing (Latin)
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Use dmy dates from October 2015
- Vague or ambiguous time from November 2014
- Articles with unsourced statements from February 2010
- Commons category link is defined as the pagename
- Articles with German-language external links
- Articles with Latin-language external links
- Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference
- 1686 births
- 1736 deaths
- Dutch physicists
- Dutch inventors
- Fellows of the Royal Society
- German physicists
- German inventors
- People from Gdańsk
- People from Royal Prussia
- Polish inventors
- Polish physicists
- 17th-century scientists
- 18th-century scientists
- 17th-century physicists