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From: Graeme Thomas <Graeme.Thomas@insignia.co.uk>
Subject: Re: mho
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.std.internat:6466 sci.lang:67909

Ralph M Jones wrote:
> Is there some rule that applies to "Centigrade" and "Celsius"?  I
> thought they were interchangable since they mean the same thing.
I'm not sure of what international standards say on the matter; the
following applies to the UK.

Some decades ago we switched from Fahrenheit to Centigrade.  Someone
then worried that this might be confusing, as a grad is one hundredth of
a quarter circle, and a centigrad is thus a very small angle.  I'm far
from convinced that the confusion between a temperature and an angle
would have been profound, but The Powers That Be decided to change the
name of the scale to Celsius.

This had some justification, as Celsius had indeed invented a scale
running from 0 to 100 between defined endpoints based on the phase
changes of water.  His scale, however, ran from 100 at the freezing
point to 0 at the poiling point.

Thus calling the currently-used scale `Celsius' is wrong, but defined to
be less confusing than calling it `Centigrade'.

Graeme
