 Kelvin wrote in his 1848 paper that his scale was absolute in the sense that it was defined "independently of the properties of any particular kind of matter".His definitive publication, which sets out the definition just stated, was printed in 1853, a paper read in 1851.Numerical details were formerly settled by making one of the heat reservoirs a cell at the triple point of water, which was defined to have an absolute temperature of 273.16 K. Nowadays, the numerical value is instead obtained from measurement through the microscopic statistical mechanical international definition, as above.