Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit divisible into many fractions. It is because of the scale's redefinition that normal body temperature today is taken as 98.6 degrees, whereas it was 96 degrees on Fahrenheit's original scale. The Fahrenheit scale was the primary temperature standard for climatic, industrial and medical purposes in English-speaking countries until the 1970s, nowadays replaced by the Celsius scale long used in the rest of the world. Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit FRS (; ; 24 May 1686 – 16 September 1736) was a Dutch-German-Polish physicist, inventor, and scientific instrument maker. Fahrenheit was born in Danzig/Gdańsk, a predominantly German-speaking Hanseatic city in
Galileo thermometer Galileo thermometer A Galileo thermometer (or Galilean thermometer) is a thermometer made of a sealed glass cylinder containing a clear liquid and several glass vessels of varying density. As the temperature changes, the individual floats rise or fall in proportion to their respective density and the density of the surrounding liquid. It is named after Galileo Galilei because he discovered the principle on which this thermometer is based—that the density of a liquid changes in proportion to its temperature. Although named after the 16th–17th-century physicist Galileo, the thermometer described in this article was not invented by him. Galileo did invent