WHAT IS ZERO?

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 6, Issue 1675, 2 May 1884, Page 3

WHAT IS ZERO?

Porlini* not one in a, hundred can tell oil-hand why a po j ntl thirh-two degrees bolow- the point on hlircnheifo thermometer' is called aero. For that matter nobody knows llio Fahrenheit scalo was introduced 111 1720. Like other tliermometric wales it has two fixed points, the Ircmsmg point, or rather the mcltin« point of ice, and the boiling point of water. Tlio Centigrade and Reaumur seals call the freezing point zero, and measure therefrom in both directions. Im» is a very natural arrangement, iahronlioit kept tho principle on which he graduated his thermometers fi secret, and no one has over discovered it.' It is. supposed, however, that lie considered his zero—thirty-two degrees below freezing—the point of absolute cold or absence of.all heat, either because, being about the temperature of molting salt and snow, it was the greatest degree of cold that ho could produce artificially, or because it was the lowest ■ natural. temperatuae of which he could find any record. Tho grounds on which' Fahrenheit put 180 degrees between the freezing and boiling points are likewise unknown.—St. Louis Globe Democrat.