When the presenter of this show talked about how the Farenheight numbers were crazy/random/strange, I vaguely remembered from my early grade school days that there was a logical reason for the numbers.

So I tried to look up the reasons as I remmebered them, but couldn't find anything on the web.

From what I remember (almost 50 years ago) the person that developer the F scale (just like Mr Celcius) also wanted to use some known standards, and the coldest temp known and used was the freezing point of ocean water roughly zero F (it depend on the amount of salt/saturation in the water), and the 100 measurement was not the hottest point known (because they were still discovering hotter things), but the human body (98.6 is pretty close to 100, and i don't think they had the decimal precision then).

Hope that clear it up and makes un American's look a little less strange :-)

Thanks,

Don