They date absolute zero vaguely to the mid-nineteenth century. I don’t think Kelvin lived very far into the last century. It had occurred to me absolute zero predates Einstein and quantum mechanics. I wish they would come out and tell us whether various oldtimey concepts are real, or merely being used to help us rubes follow along.
Or maybe they don’t know, either.
All of science is models of reality. All models break down at some point.
The exact value of this absolute zero, relative to Celsius temperature has been measured to within a few microkelvins (it is actually defined as 0K, which is defined to be -273.15 C) It was well established IIRC in the late 19th century by extrapolation. It actually cannot be reached (this is one of several alternative versions of what is called The Third Law of Thermodynamics: "By no finite series of processes is the absolute zero of temperature achievable.") In its strongest formulation, the absolute zero of temperature isn't really defined in terms of temperature, it's defined as the temperature at which the entropy of a perfect crystal is zero.
A much better discussion of what is going on here than is stated in the article is in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_zero in the section under "negative temperature." It is brief and accessible to the layman.
The beauty of the macroscopic state variables of thermodynamics is that they don't depend on any underlying theory of matter: none of the theorems or results of classical thermodynamics were changed when classical physics was modified by relativity, and none of them were changed with the advent of quantum mechanics. If quantum mechanics was overthrown tomorrow, macroscopic thermodynamics would still be entirely valid and not a single definition, result, or equation would change.