Meteorological instrumentation rain gauge. In 1714, Gabriel Fahrenheit creates a reliable scale for measuring temperature with a mercury-type thermometer. In 1742, Anders Celsius, a Swedish astronomer, proposed the 'centigrade' temperature scale, the predecessor of the current Celsius scale. In 1783, the first hair hygrometer is demonstrated by Horace-Bénédict de Saussure. In 1806, Francis Beaufort introduced his system for classifying wind speeds. The April 1960 launch of the first successful weather satellite, TIROS-1, marked the beginning of the age where weather information became available globally. This was also used to measure the temperature of the surrounding air. A thermometer measures air temperature, or
Introduction to the metric system volt and farad in honour of Georg Ohm, Alessandro Volta and Michael Faraday respectively. This proposal had the support of William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) who had been instrumental in forming the Committee of Electrical Standards of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The use of scientists' names for such units was subsequently extended to other units, including the watt named after James Watt and the degree Celsius named after Anders Celsius. Historically, individual units evolved which were based on the size and context of what was being measured. These units could avoid the need to use large numbers