# Has anybody ever tried metric time measurement?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-ever-tried-metric-time-measurement/10233>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 10, 2000, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-ever-tried-metric-time-measurement/10233 "2000-04-10T20:11:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![Dystopos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e79b87/32.png) [@Dystopos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dystopos)\
**Post date:** [April 13, 2000, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-ever-tried-metric-time-measurement/10233/41 "2000-04-13T03:00:00Z")

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I know this has been covered somewhere, but yes - the Fahrenheit scale was intended to run from ‘as cold as it gets’ to ‘as warm as you or I.’ – I’ve heard different accounts of how the cold end was determined with the most frequent being the temperature of ice melting rapidly. Incidentally, I’ve also heard that the 98.6 ‘average’ is bogus. Normal body temparatures vary by more than a degree, but at some point a conversion of units produced a false significant figure of six tenths which has survived without merit.

Anyone care to do the research for this lazy newbie?

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**Author:** ![RM\_Mentock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e274bd/32.png) [@RM\_Mentock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RM_Mentock)\
**Post date:** [May 20, 2000, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-ever-tried-metric-time-measurement/10233/42 "2000-05-20T04:03:21Z")

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Bump, and bookmark.

Hey, lazy newbie, convert it to celsius.

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**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\
**Post date:** [May 20, 2000, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-ever-tried-metric-time-measurement/10233/43 "2000-05-20T05:19:42Z")

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I remember reading that Fahrenheit chose as the zero of his scale the coldest temperature recorded during a certain year outside his laboratory, and assigned 100 to the hottest temperature. However, the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ says

> [@](#):
>
> The 18th-century German physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit originally took as the zero of his scale the temperature of an equal ice-salt mixture and selected the values of 30 and 90 for the freezing point of water and normal body temperature, respectively; these later were revised to 32 and 96, but the final scale required an adjustment to 98.6 for the latter value.

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