[sirsar]

I still remember the day I found out the "98.6 degrees" human body temperature was just an oversignificant conversion from "about 37 C, or maybe lower."

[JadeNB]

> I still remember the day I found out the "98.6 degrees" human body temperature was just an oversignificant conversion from "about 37 C, or maybe lower."

Really? According to Wikipedia, the Fahrenheit scale (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit#History) is about 18 years older than the Celsius scale (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celsius#History), and I'm surprised that human body temperature wasn't included as a calibration. (But of course the fact that I'm surprised by it doesn't mean it isn't true!)

[cyphar]

Fahrenheit was initially intended to have 96°F be equal to body temperature (in fact it was one of the three fixed points in the temperature scale, designed to have 64 steps between the freezing point of water at 32°F and human body temperature).

However after the introduction of Celcius, Fahrenheit was redefined slightly (with the freezing and boiling point of water being the fixed "nice" values for the scale -- to match the model used by Celcius) which resulted in human body temperature no longer having such a nice value. This also moved the 0°F value. So while technically Fahrenheit does predate Celcius and it did have a "nice" value for body temperature when invented, it was soon afterwards redefined such that arguably the value is just a conversion from Celcius.

In short, you're both correct. :D

[_underfl0w_]

Could've sworn I remember hearing in grade school that one of then was actually calibrated with cow body temperatures. Don't remember which scale, though.