The Man Behind the Celsius Temperature Scale

The Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius (1701–1744) invented the centigrade temperature scale in 1742. The Celsius scale, as it was renamed in 1948 in his honour, is used to measure temperatures in all countries except the United States, Bahamas, Belize, Cayman Islands, and Liberia. This makes celsius the most widely used temperature scale in the world. Its previous name, centigrade, was rooted in Latin — centum (a hundred) and gradus (steps).

The celsius scale is based on the freezing and boiling points for water — 0 degrees for freezing and 100 for boiling. Hence a warm summer day might be 20–35 degrees depending on your location and anything below zero will be literally “freezing outside” as water will have turned from its liquid form into solid ice, hail, or snow.

Celsius was best-known for his astronomy work but he was also a noted mathematician and physicist whose father and grandfather were renowned scientists. He was the first to notice a relationship between the aurora borealis and the Earth’s magnetic field, for example.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace Tierney

Tweeting @wordfoolery

Books about word history https://wordfoolery.wordpress.com/my-books/)

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