The Celsius Scale is A Lie!

So I am American…

My parents were born in America, as were there parents before them.

I was raised right in the middle of the United States, so it is only obvious that when I talk about the weather, I use the Fahrenheit scale instead of Celsius.  Although I have learned the absolute basics of the more commonly used Celsius scale (like zero degrees is freezing and hundred degrees is boiling).

With that being said, I am still lackluster in ‘translating Celsius’.

If someone walked up to me and told me the temperature outside in Celsius, I would be absolutely clueless.  I would have to search up a Celsius to Fahrenheit conversion calculator on Google.

Basically, I am a Fahrenheit man, and will always be one!

I do not dislike the Celsius scale, I am just unaware of it.  It is through that lack of knowledge that I decided to do some research about the Celsius scale, and I found out some intriguing facts about this specific temperature measurement.

---

The Celsius scale was invented back in 1742, by a Swedish scientist named Anders Celsius (obviously, a coincidence).  Anders was someone who kept his head in the clouds, mainly, because he was an astronomer.  Now Anders did a bunch of different experiments and research on many different topics, you know, normal science-y stuff.  Anders was not the only scientist from his family.  Both of his grandfathers were scientists, as was his father, Nils Celsius.

 

So there was probably a lot of pressure for Anders to succeed in his science career.

There is not a ton of direct details on the backstory of Anders Celsius, since he lived in the 1700’s.  I have a good imagination, though, so that shouldn’t be a problem.

 

While not verified, I imagine that Anders once was walking outside in his city, and someone asked what the weather was like for the day.  Anders, being the quirky and witty guy that he was, answered with the number “16” (18th century humor, am I right?).  The other person was completely confused, and probably accused Anders of being a witch.  However, Anders reassured the stranger that he was an astronomer, but that the stranger’s accusation was understandable.

Anyways, Anders did some studies involving temperature, and thermometers, and came up with the ‘Celsius Scale’.  Now that is impressive enough, but here is the interesting part…

Anders’ original ‘Celsius scale’ had the freezing point at 100 degrees and the boiling point at 0 degrees.  For some reason, Anders thought that it would make since to have higher degrees signify coldness, and lower degrees signify hot temperature.

However, not long after discovering the career defining, life-accomplishing Celsius scale, Anders got tuberculosis, and died in 1744 (2 years later).  That is sort of sad, considering Anders was only 42 years old.

But just because Anders Celsius was dead, did not stop other people from meddling with the Celsius scale.  People were still annoyed with the ‘100 degrees is freezing’ system that Anders originally created.  This led for people to invert the Celsius scale and make it the system we use today (where 0 degrees is freezing, and 100 degrees is boiling).  This change was happening as early as 1747.

That’s right…the Celsius scale currently used is not what it was originally.  The current scale is a phony!  This means that we’ve all been lied to by the school system and 3rd grade textbooks for centuries!  If you are truly wanting to be an originalist, boil your gluten-free spaghetti at a simmering 0 degrees Celsius!

---

What do you think?  I found this all very interesting, and hope you found it intriguing as well.  I did not know any of the origins of the Celsius system, so I feel like this was educational (for me, at least).

I am hoping to write another post on Friday, to keep up this strenuous schedule.  Although, I am pretty busy Friday, so we will see!

Thanks so much for reading!