1736: German physicist and instrument maker Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit dies in the Netherlands. His pioneering work on thermometers means he will live on, to a degree.

Fahrenheit, however, wanted to standardize the thermometer. First, he produced two thermometers in 1714 that gave identical readings, a major accomplishment for the time. He went on to substitute mercury for alcohol as the measuring medium that would expand and contract. And he introduced the cylindrical shape, replacing the spherical bulbs that had been used previously.

He introduced the scale that bears his name and that’s still used to measure temperature — if only in the metric-averse United States. Folklorically, zero was the coldest day of the winter he created the scale, and 32 degrees the freezing point of water, which resulted in 212 degrees for the boiling point of water at sea level (which, you will recall, is overhead in much of Holland).

But that’s not the way of a methodical scientist who wanted to standardize things. Zero was as cold as he could make a concentrated solution of ice, water and salt, and 96 was supposed to be human body temperature.

He was a little low on that, but he was striving for mathematical convenience: 96 = 3 x 32. In any event, water’s boiling point at 212 is 180 degrees opposite to its freezing point at 32.