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Journal of William John Wills: 23 April-28 June 1861
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The Diary Itself and the Transcripts

The diary was written in a surveyor’s field notebook with tables already printed for latitude, longitude and meteorological observations. In the section for the date, the year ‘186’ was pre-printed and Wills inserted ‘1’ after it in most cases where he recorded weather data. The left hand column, for times, followed the nautical tradition, with hours starting at 1 after midday, instead of midnight.

Wills refers to two scales in his measurement of temperatures: Reaumur (sometimes spelt as Reaumer in his diary) and Fahrenheit. The former is named after the French scientist Rene Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur (1683–1757). He fixed the freezing point of water at 0o and the boiling point at 80o. This temperature scale is no longer in use, unlike Fahrenheit, which is still used in some parts of the world. The German scientist Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686–1734) designed the mercury thermometer in 1724. On the Fahrenheit scale, the freezing point of water is 32o and the boiling point is 212o.

 
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