Most desired Sci-Fi Invention

[Nate the Great]

If you can believe Isaac Asimov's scientific essays (and I do), this is an abbreviated, as-factual-as-I-can-recall story of the zero point on the Farenheit scale:

One day a scientist made a new kind of thermometer. Whether he invented the modern mercury thermometer or not is beside the point. To create gradations he decided to set zero as the coldest temperature that he could create in a lab. This turned out to be a slush of salt and snow. He plunked in his termometer and marked off zero. As for thirty-two and two-twelve, he decided to show off by separating the range between ice freezing and boiling into a hundred and eighty degrees. This is because the predominating scale at the time had only eighteen "degrees" in it because of the crudeness of previous thermometers. He wanted to show off and say that his thermometer was ten times as accurate. Using this range of numbers and the current zero, we get thirty-two and two-twelve.