When did Degrees Centigrade turn into Degrees Celsius?

Asked by majorrich (14741

) September 11th, 2009

Looking through some of my late Fathers things, I found several thermometers reading Centigrade. I remember using the term when I was a boy growing up on “The Rock” (Okinawa). Now I live in CONUS and all I hear in metric referring to temperature is Celsius. When and why did that change?

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5 Answers

The guy who invented the system was called Celcius. The system has 100 degrees (or grades) between the freezing and boiling points of water. Therefore “centi-grade”.

Jack79 (11027

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it has always been celsius here

ragingloli (52278

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Have a read: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1962Sci...136..254S

Les (10005

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“The Celsius scale is the centigrade scale with one change. Defined in 1954 at the 10th General Conference of Weights and Measures, temperature on the Celsius scale is the temperature on the Kelvin scale minus 273.15. This definition makes values on the Celsius and centigrade scale agree within less than 0.1 degree. For everyday purposes, the scales are identical. One reason for doing away with the word “centigrade,” was that it might be confused with one-hundredth of a grade, a unit of plane angle.” Source: http://www.sizes.com/units/temperature_centigrade.htm

I thought they were the same. Who knew?

LuckyGuy (43880

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