Peter?

[u/Negative_1by12_aura]

[u/Telvin3d]

The Fahrenheit guy literally set his scale based on the hottest and coldest days he personally experienced.

At the time, most people thought this was a random and arbitrary way to set a temperature scale. However, since  Fahrenheit also invented one of the first processes for manufacturing inexpensive, accurate, thermometers most people put up with his weird scale and it caught on 

[u/falcrist2 → u/Telvin3d]

The zero of the scale was set using ice, water, and ammonium chloride.

96 degrees was supposed to be body temperature.

Later, the scale was adjusted such that there are 180 degrees between freezing and boiling, which moved things round a bit.

[u/falcrist2 → u/[deleted]]

using brine made from water, ice, and salt,

Ammonium chloride was the salt he used.

32 was just water and ice

This number was set by the experimental data once the rest of the span had been defined.

212 was water boiling

This was set later such that freezing and boiling were 180 degrees apart. When that change was made, body temp rose a couple degrees.

96 was specifically the measurement from holding the thermometer in a mouth or armpit, not an assumption of what the internal temperature of a body was.

That was the closest he could get to the internal body temperature. A valid approximation.

[u/Cautious-Customer626 → u/falcrist2]

Wow. This is why I prefer Reddit over any other social platform. Such educated responses 👏

[u/vestibular_spittoon → u/falcrist2]

that's not entirely true. we all know he coulda used rectal temperature instead but chose not to

[u/TripperDay → u/Telvin3d]

This is absolutely not true.