Virtually every country on earth uses Celsius to measure temperature. But the US still uses Fahrenheit. The Celsius scale even looks simpler. It has freezing and boiling points at nice, zero and 100. Where Fahrenheit, it’s a bit of a mess. Fahrenheit was really useful in the early 18th century. At the time, no one really had a consistent way to measure temperature. But then Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit a German scientist, came up with the Fahrenheit scale when he invented the mercury thermometer in 1714. To make the scale, the most popular theory is that he picked the temperature of an ice + water + salt mixture at the zero mark. He then put the freezing point of water, which is higher than a salt mixture, at 32ºF. And placed the average temperature of the human body at 96ºF. From there, he placed the boiling point of water at 212ºF. In 1724, Fahrenheit formalized that scale and was introduced into the British Royal Society, where his system was a big hit. As Britain conquered ...