Around 1700, Isaac Newton (1642–1727) applied his mind to the problem of heat. He elaborated a first qualitative temperature scale, comprising about twenty reference points ranging from "cold air in winter" to "glowing coals in the kitchen fire". This approach was rather crude and problematical, so Newton quickly became dissatisfied with it. He knew that most substances expand when heated, so he took a container of linseed oil and measured its change of volume against his reference points. He found that a litre of linseed oil at the temperature of melting snow grew to 1.0725 L at the temperature of boiling water.
After a while, he defined the "zeroth degree of heat" as melting snow and "33 degrees of heat" as boiling water. He called his instrument a "thermometer".
Thus the unit of this scale, the Newton degree, equals 100/33rd of a kelvin (or of a degree Celsius) and has the same zero as the Celsius scale.
Photo of an antique thermometer backing board c. 1758 (http://www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/results.asp?image=10413117&wwwflag=&imagepos=43)—marked in four scales; the first is Newton's.
Temperature is the heat of an object, measured by its intensity or degree on a defined scale.
Newton’s temperature scale fixed the degrees by defining the two points of melting snow and boiling water as 0 and 33 respectively.
The freezing point temperature on this scale, then, is 491.67°R. Swedish Astronomer Anders Celsius proposed a temperature scale in 1742 that marked the boiling and freezing/melting points of water as its key terms.
It had the same zero point as the scale later devised by Celsius — Newton called the temperature of melting snow the 0th degree of heat.
The temperature of water on the Newtonscale was 33 degrees of heat.
The Delislescale, devised by French astronomer Joseph-Nicolas Delisle, had 0 degrees at the boiling point of water and, after a recalibration by Josias Weitbrecht, 150 degrees at the freezing point.
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