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From: Graeme Thomas <Graeme.Thomas@insignia.co.uk>
Subject: Re: mho
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Peter Hullah wrote:
> Funny - it's known as Celsius (and sometimes centigrade) in France
> as well and I'm sure the UK's Powers That Be didn't influence that
> one iota!
Perhaps I should have mentioned that both names were current in the UK
before the change, but with Centigrade being much the commoner. 
Afterwards the term centigrade was all but forgotten, with all official
reports mentioning Celsius.  It's possible that the change was actually
made to conform with the French usage, but was made more politically
acceptable by being seen as a method of not confusing our neighbours.

The only time I've seen centigrade used recently (apart from in
discussions like this) is as an adjective which describes any
temperature scale with 100 degrees between its defining endpoints.  Thus
both Celsius' original scale and the one that now bears his name are
centigrade scales.

Graeme
