Re:How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America
by stan_rogers on Sunday July 17, 2011 @03:59PM
(#2774054)
Farenheit's "body temperature" was the axillary (armpit) temperature, and he set it to 96 degrees (on average) when creating his scale. And yes, your supposition about the divisibility of key numbers is right.
Fahrenheit. (It doesn't seem to be true that he intended 100 degrees to be human body temperature. It's possible that he specifically wanted the difference between body temperature and freezing point to be (a power of 2) degrees.)