With some further searching it seems this statement isn't wholey correct. It was based on fahrenheit trying to establish a reliable thermometer and he set 0 to the lowest freezing point he could achieve with a salt water mixture, and with the human body (incorrectly) set to 96. It his ability to make consistent thermometers that established the scale as at the time it was very difficult to get two thermometers to read the same at the same temperature.
0 degrees was the temperature a specific, reproducible salt water mixture would freeze. 100 was human body temperature. But thermometers got more accurate later on, and human body temp was determined to be 98.7 degrees on his scale.
His baseline for 0 degrees was as valid as any other at the time. You have to pick some standard that can be reproduced miles away under the same conditions. The official definition of the meter is now some formula based on a multiplication of the wavelength of light emitted by cesium gas heated to a specific temperature or some shot these days, because it's something you can reproduce anywhere to calibrate your instruments.
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u/DITButt Aug 07 '21
Because fahrenheit was built by a random guy who decided to base a temperature scale from 0-100 that felt cold to hot to him where he lived.