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?
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