Scale of temperature in the context of "Celsius scale"

The degree Celsius is the unit of temperature on the Celsius temperature scale (originally known as the centigrade scale outside Sweden), one of two temperature scales used in the International System of Units (SI), the other being the closely related Kelvin scale. The degree Celsius (symbol: °C) can refer to a specific point on the Celsius temperature scale or to a difference or range between two temperatures. It is named after the Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius (1701–1744), who proposed the first version of it in 1742. The unit was called centigrade in several languages (from the Latin centum, which means 100, and gradus, which means steps) for many years. In 1948, the International Committee for Weights and Measures renamed it to honor Celsius and also to remove confusion with the term for one hundredth of a gradian in some languages. Most countries use this scale, with the exception of the United States, some island territories, and Liberia, where the Fahrenheit scale is still used.

Throughout the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, the scale was based on 0 °C for the freezing point of water and 100 °C for the boiling point of water at 1 atm pressure. (In Celsius's initial proposal, the values were reversed: the boiling point was 0 degrees and the freezing point was 100 degrees.)

The Fahrenheit scale (/ˈfærənhaɪt, ˈfɑːr-/) is a temperature scale based on one proposed in 1724 by the physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686–1736). It uses the degree Fahrenheit (symbol: °F) as the unit. Several accounts of how he originally defined his scale exist, but the original paper suggests the lower defining point, 0 °F, was established as the freezing temperature of a solution of brine made from a mixture of water, ice, and ammonium chloride (a salt). The other limit established was his best estimate of the average human body temperature, originally set at 90 °F, then 96 °F (about 2.6 °F less than the modern value due to a later redefinition of the scale).

For much of the 20th century, the Fahrenheit scale was defined by two fixed points with a 180 °F separation: the temperature at which pure water freezes was defined as 32 °F and the boiling point of water was defined to be 212 °F, both at sea level and under standard atmospheric pressure. It is now formally defined using the Kelvin scale.

The Leiden scale (°L or ÐL) is a temperature scale that was used to calibrate low-temperature indirect measurements in the early 20th century, by providing conventional values (in kelvins, then termed "degrees Kelvin") of helium vapour pressure. The scale dates back at around 1894, when Heike Kamerlingh Onnes established his cryogenics laboratory in Leiden, Netherlands. It was used below −183 °C, the starting point of the International Temperature Scale in the 1930s (Awbery 1934). The boiling points of standard hydrogen (−253 °C), consisting of 75% orthohydrogen and 25% parahydrogen, and oxygen (−183 °C) were used as fixed points, corresponding to zero and 70 on the scale respectively.