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Biography of Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit
Name: Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit
Birth Date: May 14, 1686
Death Date: September 16, 1736
Place of Birth: Danzig, Germany
Nationality: German
Gender: Male
Occupations: instrument maker, glassblower
Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit
The German instrument maker Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit (1686-1736) made the first reliable thermometers. The temperature scale he originated is named after him.Born in Danzig on May 14, 1686, Gabriel Fahrenheit was the son of a well-to-do merchant. He lost both parents on the same day, Aug. 14, 1701, and was thereafter apprenticed to a shopkeeper in Amsterdam. After completing a term of 4 years there, he turned to physics and became an instrument maker and glassblower. Although he lived in Amsterdam most of his life, he traveled widely and spent considerable time in England, where he became a member of the Royal Society.Fahrenheit completed his first two thermometers by 1714. They contained alcohol and agreed exactly in readings. The scale which was to bear Fahrenheit's name had not yet been calibrated, and many different scales were tried before he settled on one. He soon decided to replace the alcohol with mercury and completed a series …showed first 150 words…
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…showed last 150 words…and 212, a point selected by chance, as about the boiling point of water.Fahrenheit's thermometers were highly esteemed. He used mercury successfully because of his technique for cleaning it, and he introduced the use of cylindrical bulbs instead of spherical ones. However, his detailed technique for making thermometers was not disclosed for some 18 years, since it was a trade secret. Among the other instruments which he devised were a constant-weight hydrometer of excellent design and a "thermobarometer" for estimating barometric pressure by determining the boiling point of water.On Sept. 16, 1736, Fahrenheit died, unmarried, in the Netherlands, presumably in The Hague, where he was buried. Further Reading Henry Lipson, The Great Experiments in Physics (1968), includes a chapter on heat with reference to Fahrenheit. For background and additional material on Fahrenheit see Florian Cajori, A History of Physics (1899; rev. ed. 1929); Max von Laue, History of Physics (1947; trans. 1950); and Allen L. King, Thermophysics (1962).
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