Wikipedia states that Rømer temperature scale initially set 0 °Rø for freezing brine and 60 °Rø for boiling water. (He then slightly changed the scale, but the difference is irrelevant for my purposes).
It also states that Fahrenheit started with this scale where body temperature is 22.5 °Rø, enlarged it of a factor 4 (so that freezing water is 30 degrees and body temperature is 90 degrees) and then tweaked it so that the two values became 32 °F and 96 °F respectively; eventually some minor modification was made, and now body temperature is about 98 °F.
However this does not work: with such operations, water would be boiling over 240 °F (say, 250 °F). 212 °F would be compatible with 50 °Rø for boiling water, but I don't think that in 1701 Rømer thought to use such a value (60 °Rø made much sense, because it was easily divided in parts). Indeed, since a Rømer degree is more or less equal to 2 Celsius degrees, the value of 22.5 °Rø for the human body temperature is too low: 27.5 °Rø would make more sense.
Does anybody know what really happened?
