Superiority of Celsius over Fahrenheit

Why measuring temperatures in Celsius is preferable to Fahrenheit.

Recently I got into a discussion of the merits of measuring temperature in Fahrenheit vs Celsius. Now, this may seem like a bit silly thing to spend time on. However I found it interesting to reflect on what makes a unit of measure practical to use.

From a scientific point of view Celsius has a clear advantage in that it is defined as the temperature water freezes, 0°C and when it boils, 100°C. This makes it easy to calibrate instruments anywhere in the world.

Fahrenheit in contrast was initially defined in ways which can hardly be described as very scientific:

According to a German story, Fahrenheit actually chose the lowest air temperature measured in his hometown Danzig (Gdańsk, Poland) in winter 1708/09 as 0 °F, and only later had the need to be able to make this value reproducible using brine.

The definition for 0°F he used later to make it more reproducable was defined by a mixture of ice, water, and ammonium cloride (NH₄Cl) or even sea salt. This strikes me as a rather arbitrary definition of a minimum on the temperature scale.

The max is even more odd, being defined as close to body temperature. However they didn’t get it quite right…