“As an early inventor of the thermometer as we know it, Fahrenheit naturally had to put something on them to mark out different temperatures. The scale he used became what we now call Fahrenheit.
Fahrenheit set zero at the lowest temperature he could get a water and salt mixture to reach. He then used a (very slightly incorrect) measurement of the average human body temperature, 96 degrees, as the second fixed point in the system. The resulting schema set the boiling point of water at 212 degrees, and the freezing point at 32 degrees…
Congress passed a law, the 1975 Metric Conversion Act, that was theoretically supposed to begin the process of metrication. It set up a Metric Board to supervise the transition.
The law crashed and burned. Because it made metrication voluntary, rather than mandatory, the public had a major say in the matter. And lots of people didn't want to have to learn new systems for temperatures or weights.”
It’s so, so silly when you look at it. Ugh, status quos; ugh, change being uncomfortable.
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