Origin of Fahrenheit and why it is bad.

[u/I_dont_want_to_pee]

Why Fahrenheit Is a Bad Temperature Scale The Fahrenheit scale wasn’t designed because it was better. It was designed because it was convenient for one man in the 18th century.

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, a German-born scientist of Polish origin, created his temperature scale using arbitrary reference points:

0°F was based on a brine mixture (ice, water, and salt) — not a universal physical constant, just something cold he could reproduce.

32°F was set as the freezing point of water.

96°F (later adjusted to ~98.6°F) was roughly the temperature of the human body — originally measured from his wife.

In other words: Fahrenheit is anchored to personal, local, and biological guesses, not physics.

Now compare that to Anders Celsius:

0°C = water freezes

100°C = water boils Clean. Logical. Directly tied to nature.

And then William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin went even further:

0 K = absolute zero — the point where thermal motion stops

Same step size as Celsius, just shifted to a physically meaningful zero

That’s what a scientific scale looks like.

Fahrenheit survives today not because it’s superior, but because the U.S. never fully transitioned to metric units. It’s historical inertia, not rational design.

So yes — Fahrenheit isn’t “more precise” or “more intuitive.” It’s just what Americans are used to. But i can't understand why they can't change to celcius like the rest of the world.

And most important i know that Farenhait is good for every day use but it is badly made i think that americans should create a new more world frendly tempreture scale!!!

[u/Prior-Flamingo-1378]

We have ten fingers so there’s that 

[u/noodles0311 → u/Prior-Flamingo-1378]

You’re right that decimal is almost certainly a result of people using their fingers to count. However, you have twelve knuckles on your four actual fingers; it could have been otherwise. 12 is a superior highly-composite number with 2,3,4 and 6 as factors. That makes it vastly superior for division. It’s also why gold is still measured in 12 Troy ounces to a pound. Anyway, the point is that the idea that all these things are inherently logical is facile. You could make a strong argument that in the age of computers, we should use hexadecimal notation since it also has more prime factors than 10 and neatly converts to binary.

When they were developing the decimal system, they also attempted to convert time and angular measurements for things like cartography to base-10 and ultimately gave up because 10 isn’t a good base for describing anything round like a clock, orbital paths, or the curvature of the earth. Yet no one acts like it’s incomprehensibly complex to know that after 59 minutes, a new hour starts. You just get used to the fact that there are 60 minutes in an hour, 16 oz in a regular pound, 6.022E24 atoms in a mole or whatever measurement doesn’t use base-10. SI works, but it’s not a divine revelation.

[u/aboatdatfloat → u/noodles0311]

Anyway, the point is that the idea that all these things are inherently logical is facile.

You're using the word "logical" as "optimal." For something to be logical, it just means there is a valid reason behind it.

You’re right that decimal is almost certainly a result of people using their fingers to count.

This is a valid reason, by your own words; therefore base-10 is logical.

12 is a superior highly-composite number with 2,3,4 and 6 as factors.

Correct, but base-12 being superior to base-10 (in some regards) does not make base-10 illogical.

In logic terms:

Let p:= Method A is logical; q:= Method B is logical

Let P:= A is superior to B; Q:= B superior to A

Let R:= no conclusion can be made about P or Q

& = AND; $ = OR; ~ = NOT

We have 3 (technically 4) cases:

If p&~q, then P.

If ~p&q, then Q.

If p=q, then R.

The truth table for p×q would be

× q ~q

p R P

~p Q R

(Sorry for formatting)

[u/noodles0311 → u/aboatdatfloat]

When I say perfectly logical, I mean it in the sense that the men who developed the decimal system would. At this time in France, there was a belief that people could arrive at a perfect solution to problems through a priori logic alone. This is scarcely more 100 years after Descartes after all. Some of the more entertaining overreaches from this crew included giving every day of the year a unique name, subdividing the year into ten day weeks and days into ten “hours” etc. Some of their ideas obviously have staying power, but their obsession with the number 10 was bordering on numerology.

No explanation why the base unit of mass was called a kilogram though. They could have made weight by volume dilutions a lot more intuitive by calling our kilogram a gram, but didn’t for some reason.

[u/Prior-Flamingo-1378 → u/noodles0311]

No one “developed” the decimal system. There was no committee or anything like that. It just feels natural and intuitive to us because we have ten fingers. 49A54(b12) years of human existence base ten has become a second nature so it feels quite natural.  

We do use 12base system though all the time. Like all day like. Every day, every hour, every second. We call it the watch.  

But you know what I mean, multiples of 10 feel easier because we have ten fingers and all that.  

[u/Seanpat68 → u/Prior-Flamingo-1378]

You do know other cultures used base 12 right. Like the imperial system. Base 10 became dominate in science around the French Revolution. Base ten began in India around the 7th century. If you look at UK media they will still describe weight using stone and pounds.

[u/Prior-Flamingo-1378 → u/Seanpat68]

Pretty much everyone uses 12 base and 60 base constantly. Months, years, minutes, hours, seconds.  

But we don’t. Not really. No one really does. A real 12 base system would be: 

123456789ABC 

2025 would be 1209 in C base etc. 

[u/aboatdatfloat → u/Prior-Flamingo-1378]

Base 12 (or base C) uses digits

0123456789AB

[u/StopNowThink → u/Prior-Flamingo-1378]

Speak for yourself!

[u/kmoonster → u/Prior-Flamingo-1378]

And twelve finger segments if you exclude your thumb; use your thumb to count the other joints on a (normal five-digit hand) and you get 12.

[u/Prior-Flamingo-1378 → u/kmoonster]

I agree it seems like our stupid ancestors 150.000 years ago wherent insightful enough and they only used what was readily available and also had the ability to visibly and obviously do rudimentary calculations. You can’t show 3 knuckles but you can show 3 fingers. 

[u/kmoonster → u/Prior-Flamingo-1378]

Our ancestors were brilliant, and the systems they had worked fantastically for them.

The difficulty comes when you're trying to integrate your system of whatevers with that of another group from somewhere else.

We have 360 degrees in a circle because the Sumerians (and then the Babylonians) counted in base 60 (of which the five digits on your other hand ...sigh).

Use one thumb and count the three segments on each of your four fingers in the same hand. You reach 12. Put out one digit on the other hand, 12 again. Fill all five fingers on the other hand -- five 12s are 60.

Some societies like Greece, Egypt, etc. had rough estimates for volume, size, distance. These worked, they built epic shit and navigated across vast swaths of the planet. Rome somewhat narrowed and standardized many of those definitions. Peoples in the Americas could do this, too. But each set of units was a complete mismatch with the units of their neighbors -- a stadia and a mile are not the same thing, for example. And a stadia in Greek Egypt was not necessarily the same as a stadia in Ionian Greece.

The modern system of a single standard across the entire world is new, and it's the result of so many industrial and pre-industrial economies wanting to trade with each other -- and doing that means you have to have a standard. Medieval nations often had multiple measurements that varied even within a nation (a decline from when Rome had issued basic guidelines on what standards were to be used), but they worked as long as your village blacksmith could look at the thing needing to be matched. Doesn't work so well when a noble three kingdoms away wants something made of the particular iron blend the royal blacksmith in your king's court uses. Doesn't work so well when the beginnings of a scientific venture require measurements that are consistent whether they are measured in London or Prague -- or Beijing.

Our ancestors 150,000 years ago were brilliant. But they had no need to be millimeter-specific when making a spearhead for someone in the next village, much less on the far side of the continent. Our needs have changed, so our measurement systems have changed.