Mercury-in-glass thermometer ushered in a new era of accuracy and precision in thermometry, and is still to this day regarded as one of the most accurate thermometers available. The thermometer was used by the originators of the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales. Anders Celsius, a Swedish scientist, devised the Celsius scale, which was described in his publication "The origin of the Celsius temperature scale" in 1742. Celsius used two fixed points in his scale: the temperature of melting ice and the temperature of boiling water. This wasn't a new idea, since Isaac Newton was already working on something similar. The distinction of Celsius
Delisle scale Delisle scale The Delisle scale (°D) is a temperature scale invented in 1732 by the French astronomer Joseph-Nicolas Delisle (1688–1768). Delisle was the author of "Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire et aux progrès de l'Astronomie, de la Géographie et de la Physique" (1738). In 1732, Delisle built a thermometer that used mercury as a working fluid. Delisle chose his scale using the temperature of boiling water as the fixed zero point and measured the contraction of the mercury (with lower temperatures) in hundred-thousandths. Delisle thermometers usually had 2400 or 2700 gradations, appropriate to the winter in St. Petersburg, as he