When will the U.S. finally go metric?
Markus Kuhn
I just saw that IEEE has decided to use exclusively SI units and
to bann the ancient inch/pound/gallon legacy from their
standards. Excellent! (for the announcement, see
<URL:http://stdsbbs.ieee.org/announcements/metric.html>).
IEEE seems to be quite progressive compared to other U.S.
organizations in these things. If I remember correctly, the IEEE
standards are even printed on ISO A4 paper instead of on the old
216x279 mm U.S. Letter format (there were no black borders when I copied
a few POSIX.1b pages on a German copying machine).
When will ANSI follow? Does anyone know of any other schedules
of other U.S. organizations to finally switch to SI units?
When I moved from Germany to Indiana a few months ago, I was a little
bit disappointed to see how rarely SI units are still used here
in daily live. I have encountered a few enthusiastic American SI
supporters, but they clearly seem to be a small educated minority and
the remaining population is mostly ignorant about the fact that this
country is the last one where metric units are not generally used
and what problems this causes.
Any idea why?
Markus
--
Markus Kuhn, Computer Science grad student, Purdue
University, Indiana, US, email: ku...@cs.purdue.edu
James Logajan
Markus Kuhn (ku...@cs.purdue.edu) wrote:
...
: When I moved from Germany to Indiana a few months ago, I was a little
: bit disappointed to see how rarely SI units are still used here
: in daily live.
: Any idea why?
First, let me say that I would prefer SI units over English units. I also
expect to see a number of informed replies to Markus Kuhns' post. That said,
I think the reason the average U.S. citizen would give is: "If it ain't
broke, why fix it?" You say that not going to SI causes problems. Well,
it would help if you (and SI proponents) listed those problems. After all,
there is the conversion cost in going to SI that must be outweighed. And if
you could show that it is economically bad to avoid SI, people would favor
it. Alas, that isn't the case, and won't be for many decades. Firms with
global dealings already have switched to SI where it is needed to compete.
(E.G. Soft drinks come in liter bottles now, not quarts).
It should be noted that the U.S. has used a base 10 system in the one thing
that is used in daily arithmetic by most people: money. There just isn't much
demand for simplifying arithmetic involving, say, feet, inches, yards, and
miles. Of course engineers like SI: they are one of the few classes of people
whose life is simplified! BIG exception: which coumtry has sent men to
the moon? Guess what their choice of units was? See for example the preface
to the classic "Rocket Propulsion Elements" by George P. Sutton, 6th edition:
"Today in U.S. propulsion companies most of the design (90 percent according
to the author's recent informal survey) and almost all of the manufacturing of
rocket hardware is still done with the Engish Engineering units (foot or inch,
pounds, and seconds) and has not been replaced by SI units (meters, kilograms
and seconds). In fact some U.S. Government contracts on propulsion that
originally specified SI units were changed to English units because of cost
savings and conversion difficulties. Transition to SI units is complex and
proceeding very slowly in U.S. industry and the duality of units will
probably be demanded for perhaps 10 or 20 more years."
Tom Smith
Markus Kuhn wrote:
>
> I just saw that IEEE has decided to use exclusively SI units and
> to bann the ancient inch/pound/gallon legacy from their
> standards. Excellent! (for the announcement, see
> <URL:http://stdsbbs.ieee.org/announcements/metric.html>).
>
for years. In many cases, dual units. The official system of the
U.S. has been metric for about a century.
> IEEE seems to be quite progressive compared to other U.S.
> organizations in these things. If I remember correctly, the IEEE
> standards are even printed on ISO A4 paper instead of on the old
> 216x279 mm U.S. Letter format (there were no black borders when I copied
> a few POSIX.1b pages on a German copying machine).
>
The IEEE standards I have (and have written) are published on that
"horrible old" U.S. letter size format, making it very convenient
for placing in U.S. filing cabinets and bookshelves. However, the
printable area, as I recall, is designed so that it will copy on A4
as well. This kind of thoughtfullness regarding the consumer may
often be absent in some other parts of the world.
I think the real story is probably that the IEEE and other U.S.
organizations don't feel compelled by the notion that there is
only one right solution to a problem. Few people in the U.S. would
expect Europe to convert to 110 Volts, for example, even if they
might like to see it.
> When will ANSI follow? Does anyone know of any other schedules
> of other U.S. organizations to finally switch to SI units?
>
"ANSI" is not a standards development organization. It is an
administrative organization who endorses standards developed by
a variety of standards development organizations, including IEEE.
In short, people will switch on their own schedules, largely
unrelated to whatever the formal standards bodies decide to do.
> When I moved from Germany to Indiana a few months ago, I was a little
> bit disappointed to see how rarely SI units are still used here
> in daily live. I have encountered a few enthusiastic American SI
> supporters, but they clearly seem to be a small educated minority and
> the remaining population is mostly ignorant about the fact that this
> country is the last one where metric units are not generally used
> and what problems this causes.
>
> Any idea why?
>
I think you answered your own question. Daily life. In the U.S.,
neither the government nor any other organization is chartered to
regulate daily life and individual preferences. A good idea is
expected to win public favor on its own merits, not because it
has been regulated into existence. Now that you are living in
the U.S., you may notice this in many ways as a significant
difference between U.S. and German cultures. As Mr. Logan so
aptly pointed out, in the lives of ordinary citizens, "If it
ain't broke, don't fix it" is the predominant common-sense
approach to life and commerce.
In the specific case of metrification, re-tooling of industry,
housing, and home workshops is not something that comes for free.
If you're building a new plant, it might make sense at that
time to consider changing the way you do business, but only
if your suppliers and customers are also desirous of change and
only if the cost of change is offset by the benefits. Whether you
happen to measure in inches or centimeters is a far less important
matter than whether your business will make enough money next year
to continue to finance further investments in the future.
For many businesses, and for virtually all individual citizens, there
simply are no significant "problems" worth noting. What are the
problems you have in your own daily life? I suspect that having to
replace all your electrical appliances weighs a lot more heavily
on your pocketbook than having to deal with feet and miles. And if
having to think in feet and miles is inconvenient and unnatural
for you, why should you think it would be any different for the
average American to have to think in meters and kilometers?
Cultural changes such as these happen over generations, not years.
-Tom
_______________________________________________________________________
Tom Smith sm...@see.mro.dec.com
Digital Equipment Corp. Tel: +1 (508) 467-4751
200 Forest St. MRO1-3/D12 FAX: +1 (508) 467-3133
Marlborough, MA 01752-3011, USA
Theron Stanford
In article <325DDA...@cs.purdue.edu>,
Markus Kuhn <ku...@cs.purdue.edu> wrote:
>When I moved from Germany to Indiana a few months ago, I was a little
>bit disappointed to see how rarely SI units are still used here
>in daily live. I have encountered a few enthusiastic American SI
>supporters, but they clearly seem to be a small educated minority and
>the remaining population is mostly ignorant about the fact that this
>country is the last one where metric units are not generally used
>and what problems this causes.
>
>Any idea why?
1) It doesn't cause any problems.
2) Those SI names are just too blasted long!
I'm serious about 2). We have lots of nice one-syllable names for our
units, broken up every so often with two-syllable ones [gallon is the only
one that immediately comes to mind].
"Liter" is short enough, and just over a quart to boot, so it's OK.
"Kilo" isn't used as much, but it could be with a little push.
But when it's shorter to say "half an inch" than "centimeter", forget it.
Theron
Erland Sommarskog
the...@phnom-penh.berkeley.edu (Theron Stanford) skriver:
>But when it's shorter to say "half an inch" than "centimeter", forget it.
But isn't half an inch = 1.27 cm and thus longer than 1 cm? Oops, you
meant shorter to say. Dunno, whenever hear people talking of how
tall they are in English films, it sounds strangely akward when say
the "five foot four". If we forget the fact that I don't have the
faintest idea what "five foot four" stands for, it is certainly much
more convenient to say "one and eighty-three" to calque the way we
speak in Swedish.
Overall, I'd say that the length of the utterance is just another
matter of habit.
--
Erland Sommarskog, Stockholm, som...@algonet.se
F=F6r =F6vrigt anser jag att QP b=F6r f=F6rst=F6ras.
B=65sid=65s, I think QP should b=65 d=65stroy=65d.
Markus Kuhn
I have found a number of Web pages that provide information about
the introduction of SI units in the U.S. Among the most notables
and interesting ones are:
http://ts.nist.gov/ts/htdocs/200/202/mpo_reso.htm
http://lamar.ColoState.EDU/~hillger/
Markus
(1.90 m, 82 kg, 80 L, 37 °C)
Markus Kuhn
In case anyone is interested, the SI standard is now freely available
on the Internet:
http://physics.nist.gov/Pubs/SP330/sp330sl.pdf
(check www.adobe.com if you do not have a PDF viewer/printer
installed, ghostscript 4.0 also handles PDF files.)
Also available are related usage guide standards such as
http://physics.nist.gov/Pubs/SP811/sp811sl.pdf
These links are from the NIST Metric Publications page
<URL:http://ts.nist.gov/ts/htdocs/200/202/mpo_pubs.htm>.
I found both texts to be highly valuable references.
Markus
James E. Presley
Markus Kuhn wrote:
>
> In case anyone is interested, the SI standard is now freely available
> on the Internet:
Marcus I didn't know they had published SP811 as a digitized doc. Super.
We hand-entered the conversion factors from the hard copy publication.
Brutal. And data validation was even more brutal.
Our Windows freeware product, Conversion Buddy, uses the rounding
technique and the factors outlined in SP 811 to report conversion
results. If you are "into" this I invite you to download the product
which has no nags or time limits. It does tabular or "bulk" conversions
too.
http://www.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/win3/calc/cbfree37.zip
ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/win3/calc/cbfree37.zip 929681 bytes
best wishes, Jim presley
Markus Kuhn
Michael Bauer wrote:
> Abraham Simpson: "The metric system is a tool of the devil!"
> (sorry, forgot which episode)
There was also this song they were singing at some secret
freemason meeting in the Simpsons:
Who protects the British crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
We do! We do! [...]
Markus ;-)
Robert Casey
AFAIK, the english units are defined in terms of metric. So, in a way,
the USA is metric. Also, food packages now list the net weight in
english units AND metric.
But things like screws and nuts will be around for a long time.
Electrical outlet boxes installed in houses come pre-tapped for
6/32 screws. And this stuff lasts forever.
Boris Mohar
On Mon, 14 Oct 1996 21:17:59 GMT, wa2...@netcom.com (Robert Casey)
wrote:
Which reminds me.. Banana sockets are to be spaced 3/4" apart
EXACTLY!
ALLWAYS!
tc...@us1.ibm.com
In <wa2iseDz...@netcom.com>, wa2...@netcom.com (Robert Casey) writes:
>AFAIK, the english units are defined in terms of metric. So, in a way,
>the USA is metric. Also, food packages now list the net weight in
>english units AND metric.
>
>But things like screws and nuts will be around for a long time.
>Electrical outlet boxes installed in houses come pre-tapped for
>6/32 screws. And this stuff lasts forever.
Also there are some advantages to some english units.
1 foot can be divided into halfs, thirds, forths sixths or twelths without
using fractions.
Tony
Robert Casey
In article <3266cde5...@news.interlog.com> bor...@interlog.com (Boris Mohar) writes:
>On Mon, 14 Oct 1996 21:17:59 GMT, wa2...@netcom.com (Robert Casey)
>wrote:
>
>>the USA is metric. Also, food packages now list the net weight in
>>english units AND metric.
>>
>>But things like screws and nuts will be around for a long time.
>>Electrical outlet boxes installed in houses come pre-tapped for
>>6/32 screws. And this stuff lasts forever.
>
> EXACTLY!
> ALLWAYS!
>
2.54 * 3/4 = 1.905 :-)
Markus Kuhn
Robert Casey wrote:
> But things like screws and nuts will be around for a long time.
> Electrical outlet boxes installed in houses come pre-tapped for
> 6/32 screws. And this stuff lasts forever.
We have to distinguish here between "soft" and "hard" conversion.
Soft conversion means e.g. that you continue to sell some food product
in 10 oz packages, but just label them as 283 g packages. Hard
conversion means that you use nicely rounded SI quantities,
i.e. that you change the package size to say 300 g.
For screws and nuts, the change is probably not too difficult to
metric screws, because they only have to be locally compatible,
i.e. a screw has to fit its nut and the whole. You can quite
easily change the design of a product to use ISO screws and nuts.
If you look at your car, you will probably find most screws there
are already metric.
Electronic components are a bit of a problem. Chip packages
traditionally have a 2.54 mm raster and this is so well
established that it is used all over the world. Only very recent
SMD chip packages have pin spaces with nicer metric distances
(e.g., I had to work with a QFP-80 package chip where the
pins were 0.4 mm apart). Electrical connectors will probably
also not be changed very soon, so only soft conversion will
be applied here. People designing electronics equipment will
have to remember the factor 25.4 (mm per inch) long after the
U.S. has gone fully metric, but this is only fair as the rest of
the world had to struggle with the dominance of the inch system in
electronic component design for many decades.
Markus
Markus Kuhn
tc...@us1.ibm.com wrote:
> Also there are some advantages to some english units.
>
> 1 foot can be divided into halfs, thirds, forths sixths or twelths without
> using fractions.
This is *no* advantage of the old U.S. customary system over SI units:
You can do the same in metric units and this is what has been done
in Europe for a century: When you design buildings, you use certain
"module" sizes. All distances between the centers of walls are
multiples of this "module" size. The common module size used by
architects is 60 cm, which can be devided nicely by
2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30
and if all other dimensions are multiples of this module size, then
they can be divided without fractions just as nicely. The thickness
of walls often are fractions of the module size (e.g. 12, 15 or
20 cm are typical wall sizes). But there is no need for a separate
name for the module size (like foot). If you decide that your
room is 3600 mm long, then you can nicely write this also
as 3.6 m and it will still be obvious that this is nicely
divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, etc.
I never understood, why you need such a screwed system like
inch/foot/yard/mile/furlung/whatever and why you justify it with
factorability when the same has been done by metric architects
in the rest of the world all the time, too.
IMHO, the aversion of Americans against the metric system simply seems
to be based on a lack of experience with it and not on any really
fundamental disadvantage. Just use it for four weeks in daily life
and you will love it (assuming that all your collegues use it,
too, and the standards you have to follow are metric).
The module concept used in metric architecture is explained for
example on
http://www.nibs.org/metnews7.htm
Dik T. Winter
In article <wa2iseDz...@netcom.com> wa2...@netcom.com (Robert Casey) writes:
> > Which reminds me.. Banana sockets are to be spaced 3/4" apart
> > EXACTLY!
> > ALLWAYS!
> >
> No, it's EXACTLY 1.905 cm apart. An inch is defined as equal to 2.54 cm.
>
> 2.54 * 3/4 = 1.905 :-)
Which reminds me of something I once saw, an advertisement for 88.9 mm
floppies. Alas, the standard tells us they are 90 mm exactly.
--
dik t. winter, cwi, kruislaan 413, 1098 sj amsterdam, nederland, +31205924131
home: bovenover 215, 1025 jn amsterdam, nederland; http://www.cwi.nl/~dik/
Phil Cowley
In article <DzBEA...@cwi.nl>, d...@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter) wrote:
>In article <wa2iseDz...@netcom.com> wa2...@netcom.com (Robert
Casey) writes:
> > > Which reminds me.. Banana sockets are to be spaced 3/4" apart
> > > EXACTLY!
> > > ALLWAYS!
> > >
> > No, it's EXACTLY 1.905 cm apart. An inch is defined as equal to
2.54 cm.
> >
> > 2.54 * 3/4 = 1.905 :-)
>
>Which reminds me of something I once saw, an advertisement for 88.9
mm
>floppies. Alas, the standard tells us they are 90 mm exactly.
90mm floppies?????
Oh you mean 3 1/2 inch floppies! The successor to he 5 1/4 INCH and
the 8 INCH floppies.... Oh those were the days when floppies really
were floppy!
Jonathan Priluck
I beleive the US will go metric approximately 24 hours *after* hell freezes
over :^) That's just a guess.
JP
--
* Jonathan Aerospace Materials Corp., 37 Antwerp St. Brighton MA, 02135 *
* Tel (617) 783-4588, Internet: pres...@jamcorp.com *
* Developers and manufacturers of Lattice Block Materials ... *
* the world's strongest and lightest materials. *
Stan Bischof
Jonathan Priluck (jam...@world.std.com) wrote:
: I beleive the US will go metric approximately 24 hours *after* hell freezes
: over :^) That's just a guess.
Probably a good guess, but only if Hell freezes over at 0 degrees rather
than at 32 degrees!
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Stan Bischof Hewlett Packard Company 707-577-3994 st...@sr.hp.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
James H. Haynes
In article <jameslDz...@netcom.com>,
James Logajan <jam...@netcom.com> wrote:
>
>Interesting point. By rights, one would expect a metric equivalent of the
>hour and minute: 100 seconds/minute and 100 minutes/hour. [Of course, one
>would expect 10 hours/day. It would mean shortening the length of a second
>to .864 of its current value.]
And music should have whole notes, decinotes, and centinotes, and ten
beats to the measure, and decades instead of octaves. Uh, well, that
won't work either, since the frequency doubles in an octave; we'll have to
have the frequency multiply by ten, so maybe we'd better have a hundred
notes in there.
Bradley Thompson
> IMHO, the aversion of Americans against the metric system simply seems
> to be based on a lack of experience with it and not on any really
> fundamental disadvantage. Just use it for four weeks in daily life
> and you will love it (assuming that all your collegues use it,
> too, and the standards you have to follow are metric).
You're really wasting your time. This is sci.physics. Physicists are
probably the group in America *most* converted to the metric system.
Why don't you post to alt.i.love.the.usa.all.foreigners.must.die.die.die :)?
--Brad
__________________________________________________________
Bradley Thompson http://www.ids.net/~bradley
bra...@conan.ids.net http://www.ids.net/tollgate
Bruce Burke
James Logajan wrote:
>
> tc...@us1.ibm.com wrote:
> : Also there are some advantages to some english units.
>
> : 1 foot can be divided into halfs, thirds, forths sixths or twelths without
> : using fractions.
>
> hour and minute: 100 seconds/minute and 100 minutes/hour. [Of course, one
> would expect 10 hours/day. It would mean shortening the length of a second
> to .864 of its current value.]
> 2,3,4,6,10,12,15,30.
>
> And 12 inches/foot(or hours/half-day or eggs/basket), as already noted, by:
> 2,3,4,6
>
> Or 24 hours/day:
> 2,3,4,6,8,12
>
> Whereas 10 is only evenly divisable by:
> 2,5
>
> Of course, this advantage doesn't do squat for multiplication. And of course
> I can't figure out why there are 5280 feet to a mile. Or 3 feet/yard. And
> I would have to look up the size of an acre.
Hey, don't forget that you can measure the speed of light in such great units
as furlongs per fortnight......
--
Bruce Burke
Steve Baker
> Also there are some advantages to some english units.
>
> 1 foot can be divided into halfs, thirds, forths sixths or twelths without using fractions.
I reply:
If everyone was using the international system there would not be
a problem. Get on the bandwagon and enter the 21st century
even though you are about 100 years late.
Steve Baker
Steve Baker
Bradley Thompson wrote:
>
> > IMHO, the aversion of Americans against the metric system simply seems
> > to be based on a lack of experience with it and not on any really
> > fundamental disadvantage.
I reply:
I agree. The only exception I find with using metric comes
from celestial navigation (boats) Latitude and Longitude
do have a basis of fact with the NAUTICAL mile.
There are not enough of us still using this system that
it may die an insignificant death, except to those of us
who practice the art of celestial navigation.
Steve Baker
Gene Fornario
I have seen attempts to go metric in the US, notably in the 1970s. I
remember a gas station in Texas marking its pumps in liters... 33 cents to
the liter. In Southern California, I noted freeway signs giving distances
in miles and kilometers. Since then, there has been little progress in
implementing the metric system in the general public. Maybe the resistance
lies in the fact that metric is looked as a improvement we don't need. Our
present system works well for us. Look at it this way: Esperanto,
Universal Time, and 220 V electric power have their advocates.
Can the US go totally metric? Well, as one observer told me...it would have
to be a "total immersion". There would be no more talk of the old and new
side by side. Labeling would have to be entirely metric, distances metric,
temperatures metric. That would take drastic national legislation. In
other words, it would have to be mandatory, not optional.
Gene--
Arthur Chance
In article <32647A...@startext.net> Steve Baker
<po...@startext.net> writes:
> If everyone was using the international system there would not be
> a problem. Get on the bandwagon and enter the 21st century
> even though you are about 100 years late.
The 21st century started about 100 years ago??? Oh no, I've overslept
again!
--
Why can't you get cheese flavoured cough mixture?
Amos Shapir
Markus Kuhn <ku...@cs.purdue.edu> writes:
>When I moved from Germany to Indiana a few months ago, I was a little
>bit disappointed to see how rarely SI units are still used here
>in daily live. I have encountered a few enthusiastic American SI
>supporters, but they clearly seem to be a small educated minority and
>the remaining population is mostly ignorant about the fact that this
>country is the last one where metric units are not generally used
>and what problems this causes.
>Any idea why?
When Carter was in office in 1976, he passed a bill which requires all
federal agencies to become metric within 10 years. By 1986 they did --
in a way. I have seen signs in national parks saying:
ELEVATION 609.60m (2000 ft)
and even
<- WATER 15.24m (50 ft)
This leaves the impression on the average citizen, that the metric system
is something very exact and scientific, which is used by scientists and
(maybe) engineers, but is too complicated for "real life".
The UK had undergone a transition period, in which everything was
measured in units of 91.44 cm and 0.454 Kg; I guess it's mostly metric by
now. But the UK is in close contact with the rest of Europe, while in
the USA, most residents have never left their state, let alone travel to
other countries. It seems most Americans do not feel there's any
compelling reason to convert.
--
Amos Shapir Net: am...@nsof.co.il
Paper: nSOF Parallel Software, Ltd.
Givat-Hashlosha 48800, Israel
Tel: +972 3 9388551 Fax: +972 3 9388552 GEO: 34 55 15 E / 32 05 52 N
Jonathan Rosenne
I once heard that if the US were to go metric the accumulated rounding
error when triangulating from New York to Los Angeles would be about 100
feet, creating havoc with the land registry.
--
Jonathan Rosenne
JR Consulting
P O Box 33641, Tel Aviv, Israel
Phone: +972 50 246 522 Fax: +972 9 56 73 53
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Jonathan_Rosenne/
Bastin,kim
James H. Haynes (hay...@cats.ucsc.edu) wrote:
: And music should have whole notes, decinotes, and centinotes, and ten
: beats to the measure, and decades instead of octaves. Uh, well, that
: won't work either, since the frequency doubles in an octave; we'll have to
: have the frequency multiply by ten, so maybe we'd better have a hundred
: notes in there.
In acoustics, semitones _are_ divided into 100 parts (called cents!).
An octave is 1200 cents.
Kim
Tom Smith
Markus Kuhn wrote:
>
> I just saw that IEEE has decided to use exclusively SI units and
> to bann the ancient inch/pound/gallon legacy from their
> standards. ...
>
> When will ANSI follow? ...
Someone recently forwarded the following to me. I can't vouch for either
the truth of it or the attribution, but I thought it was apropos. :-)
---------
How Specs Live Forever
The US Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet,
8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?
Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads
were built by English expatriates.
Why did the English people build them like that? Because the first rail
lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways,
and that's the gauge they used. Why did "they" use that gauge then?
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools
that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Okay! Why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried
to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the old, long
distance roads, because that's the spacing of the old wheel ruts.
So who built these old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in
Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The
roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? The initial ruts, which
everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were
first made by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for or by
Imperial Rome they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
Thus, we have the answer to the original questions. The United States
standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original
specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot. Specs and
Bureaucracies live forever. So, the next time you are handed a
specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be
exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just
wide enough to accommodate the back-ends of two war horses.
Professor Tom O'Hare Germanic Lanuages (512) 471-4123
University of Texas at Austin toh...@mail.utexas.edu
---------
________________________________________________________________________
Tom Smith sm...@see.mro.dec.com
Digital Equipment Corp. Tel: +1 (508) 467-4751
200 Forest St. MRO1-3/D12 FAX: +1 (508) 467-3133
Marlborough, MA 01752-3011, USA
Bastin,kim
The UK and Australia have gone metric within relatively recent history.
As far as Australia goes, most of the old units have more or less faded
from popular consciousness - pounds and ounces, acres, Fahrenheit temperatures.
You still hear older people (say 30 years up) use the length measures,
particularly at the `human' end of the scale (feet and inches), but many
younger people find them quite mysterious.
In the early 70s I had the experience of moving from pre-metric Australia
to long-since-metric Sweden, and had to get used to the new (to me) units
in a hurry. It really only takes a few months: you learn what 20 degrees
(or minus 20!) feels like, you find out your height in centimetres and your
weight in kilos, you learn to judge whether an envelope is over or under
20 grams (which affects the postage)... i.e. you establish reference values
from your own experience.
But in long-since-metric Sweden I found one non-metric incongruity: builders
and carpenters measure timber sizes in... inches! or they did then - maybe
they've gone metric since.
just my 2 cents (10 oere) worth :-)
Kim
mu...@lure.latrobe.edu.au
Arthur Chance
In article <amos.845464870@hub> am...@nsof.co.il (Amos Shapir) writes:
> The UK had undergone a transition period, in which everything was
> measured in units of 91.44 cm and 0.454 Kg; I guess it's mostly metric by
> now.
"Undergone"? Wrong tense. Is undergoing a painfully slow transition
period would be far more accurate. The metric system has been taught
in schools for a couple of decades but life still throws various
Imperial and other non-metric measures at us.
In the last 12 months prepackaged food has had to be marked in metric
rather than Imperial units but non-packaged food can still be sold in
either and will be until 2001 (I think that's the date). Even our
packaged food can be in multiples of 100 grams or multiples and
(binary) fractions of 454 grams. Most supermarkets have gone totally
metric as having half the goods in one system and half in the other
was too silly, but there are butchers & greengrocers that still sell
in pounds.
Our beer is still sold in pints and our road signs still give
distances in miles and that will be true for the forseeable future as
we have an exemptions for both from the EU requirements for SI units
everywhere. (The reasons being tradition in the first case and the
expense of replacing all road signs in the second.) However, as of
about a year ago (not the same time as the food changeover) spirits in
pubs have had to be sold in units of 25 ml rather than 1/6th of a
gill, a change which increased the standard measure by 1.73% IIRC.
Our weather forecasts predict temperature in Celcius and have done for
more years than I can remember but on some TV channels at least, the
weather presenter will kindly translate into Fahrenheit for those
who've failed to grasp Celcius over the last decade or so.
Wood, AFAIR, comes with metric cross sections but length in feet
(except I think it may now be a "metric foot" which is 300 mm), except
for the wood for door jambs which comes in the exact length to
surround a standard door that is 2 feet 9 inches wide and 6 feet 6
inches high.
Most people asked their height and weight will answer in feet and
inches and stones and pounds. (1 stone = 14 pounds for those
unfamiliar with the unit.)
Our shoe sizes are still based on three barleycorns to the inch and an
arbitrary origin at around 8 inches, our cricket pitches are still 1
chain (= 22 yards) long (although that may be expressed in meters
these days) and the front benches in the House of Commons are still
two sword lengths apart.
Of course we're converting to metric. We're just a little bit slow at
times, that's all. :-)
Istvan.Simon
Theron Stanford wrote:
> "Liter" is short enough, and just over a quart to boot, so it's OK.
> "Kilo" isn't used as much, but it could be with a little push.
>
> But when it's shorter to say "half an inch" than "centimeter", forget
Don't worry! We call it 'centi'.
-- MfG/Bye/Udv - Simon Istvan - mailto:si...@ws6a37.gud.siemens.co.at -
-- hint: my last name is my first name :-) --------------------------
-- preferred OS: http://www.linux.org/
-- preferred browser: http://home.netscape.com/
Peter Kerr
bor...@interlog.com (Boris Mohar) wrote:
> Which reminds me.. Banana sockets are to be spaced 3/4" apart
> EXACTLY!
> ALLWAYS!
Not 19.05mm?
Nah, a 3/4" spanner = a 19mm spanner for all mechanical work,
but a 1/2" spanner != 13mm, well not quite, most times...
--
Peter Kerr bodger
School of Music chandler
University of Auckland NZ neo-Luddite
Paul Ransom
Jonathan Priluck <jam...@world.std.com> wrote:
> I beleive the US will go metric approximately 24 hours *after* hell freezes
> over :^) That's just a guess.
Do you feel a draught ...*8-)
--
Paul Ransom, P.Eng. | Good at what I do
Civil/Structural/Project | Doing what I want
Burlington, Ontario, Canada | Learning
ad...@freenet.hamilton.on.ca | Growing
Alister Harwood
Stephen Baynes wrote:
>
> And very nominal they are too. Timber sizes are the size before planing so
> the actual timber size is something else.
> The same applies in the UK. The building trade has been metric for many
> years here but wood sizes are still in inches too.
Other interesting anomalies I've noticed are pipe thread sizes: even
the DIN standard appears to be a very soft conversion of BSP - e.g. G1/4
Boat lengths also always seem to be expressed in feet, even from French
and German manufacturers, e.g Beneteau 35s5 = 35.5 ft long.
--
______________________________________________
Alister Harwood School of Civil Engineering
University of Birmingham Edgbaston
Birmingham B15 2TT United Kingdom
Stephen Baynes
Bastin,kim (MU...@lure.latrobe.edu.au) wrote:
: But in long-since-metric Sweden I found one non-metric incongruity: builders
: and carpenters measure timber sizes in... inches! or they did then - maybe
: they've gone metric since.
And very nominal they are too. Timber sizes are the size before planing so
the actual timber size is something else.
The same applies in the UK. The building trade has been metric for many
years here but wood sizes are still in inches too.
The realy stupid thing is the DIY (Do It Yourself) shops are still imperial so
you by floor covering in a metric width in lengths measured in feet!
--
Stephen Baynes Stephen...@soton.sc.philips.com
Philips Semiconductors Ltd [SERI baynes@ukpsshp1]
Southampton +44 (01703) 316431
United Kingdom My views are my own.
Are you using ISO8859-1? Do you see © as copyright, ÷ as division and ½ as 1/2?
Martin Schoon
Stephen Baynes wrote:
>
> Bastin,kim (MU...@lure.latrobe.edu.au) wrote:
>
> : But in long-since-metric Sweden I found one non-metric incongruity: builders
> : and carpenters measure timber sizes in... inches! or they did then - maybe
> : they've gone metric since.
>
> And very nominal they are too. Timber sizes are the size before planing so
> the actual timber size is something else.
Not any more. Nowdays all this in mm.
--
========================================================================
Martin Schoon <Martin...@era-a.ericsson.se>
"Problems worthy of attack
prove their worth by hitting back"
Piet Hein
========================================================================
timo.pelkonen
tc...@us1.ibm.com writes:
>1 foot can be divided into halfs, thirds, forths sixths or twelths without
>using fractions.
those who are metric don't use fractions..
funniest thing is to see man page of some gadget say
``Size: 2.0"x4.0" (50.83045x101.5832 mm)''
;)
--
timo.p...@hut.fi
Bill Arnett
Maybe the USA should make a deal with the rest of the world: we'll go
metric if you'll learn to speak English. (This is only half joking; I
think both would be big wins for the world as a whole.)
--
Bill Arnett bi...@znet.com http://www.seds.org/billa/
"I know that I am mortal and the creature of a day; but when I
search out the massed wheeling circles of the stars, my feet no
longer touch the earth, but, side by side with Zeus himself, I
take my fill of ambrosia, the food of the gods." -- Ptolemy
Markus Kuhn
Phil Cowley wrote:
> 90mm floppies?????
> Oh you mean 3 1/2 inch floppies! The successor to he 5 1/4 INCH and
> the 8 INCH floppies....
They were originally really called 90 mm floppies and are a metric
design!
A so-called 3 1/2 INCH floppy is
90 mm wide
94 mm long
3 mm thick
the center hole is 4x4 mm large, the central metal piece has
25 mm diameter, the label field is 72x55 mm wide, the shutter hole is
12x25 mm, etc. EXACTLY.
So much for the so-called 3 1/2 INCH floppy ... ;-)
After all, Japan is a metric country. The name "3 1/2 inch" floppy
disks was just invented for the 90 mm disks by some IBM marketroid
in the middle 80s when IBM started to use them in their PCs. IBM
probably assumed that a metric name like "90 mm floppy" is much too
confusing for the American customer. If you have ever seen a REALLY
old data sheet for these floppy drives, or a really old box of
these disks than you'll remember that they were originally
really called "90 mm" and not "3 1/2 "" floppies.
The 3.5" floppy name is a nice example where the U.S. resistance
against the metric system has had funny effects on the rest of the
world (wrong names, floppies now sometimes offered as
8.89 cm floppies by clueless European PC dealers, etc.).
You are right in that the 5 1/4" and 8" floppies are really
U.S. customary system designs. However in the ISO standards,
they are now also called 130 mm and 200 mm floppies, the
corresponding rounded metric sizes, just to keep the standardized
names consistent. So floppy sizes are no reason to stick with
the inch.
BTW: The CD and CD-ROM is also a metric design (120 mm diameter,
package is exactly 10 mm thick, etc.).
Markus
--
Markus Kuhn, Computer Science grad student, Purdue
University, Indiana, US, email: ku...@cs.purdue.edu
Markus Kuhn
Steve Baker wrote:
> I agree. The only exception I find with using metric comes
> from celestial navigation (boats) Latitude and Longitude
> do have a basis of fact with the NAUTICAL mile.
Just have a look at the SI Standard, where the metric system is
defined: The nautical mile is defined there as exactly 1852 m and
its use is allowed for navigation, along with a few related
units (knots, etc.). Just look at section IV.2.
The SI standard is not a religious text about the pure and only
real measurement system! It is a very practical design that
fully acknowledges that it makes sense to use a carefully selected
number of other units for some time in some selected applications.
If the U.S. congress would decide tomorrow to pass a law that only the
SI standard must be applied for business applications, then you
could continue to use the nautical mile.
The official U.S. version of the SI Standard (NIST Publication 330) is
available on the Web on
<URL:http://physics.nist.gov/Pubs/SP330/sp330.html>.
BTW: This document was updated recently in order to reflect the
recent decisions of the 20th CGPM (General Conference on
Weights and Measurements), which took place October 9-12, 1995
in Paris. So you might want to print it again even if you
have already an old copy.
Markus Kuhn
Gene Fornario wrote:
> Can the US go totally metric? Well, as one observer told me...it
> would have to be a "total immersion". There would be no more talk
> of the old and new side by side. Labeling would have to be entirely
> metric, distances metric, temperatures metric. That would take
> drastic national legislation. In other words, it would have to be
> mandatory, not optional.
I fully agree. The metric system was made mandatory in Australia,
Canada, India, England, etc. Within a few weeks, everyone converted
and no serious problems with the conversion were reported. In Canada
most street signs were replaced during one weekend, and in India
even illiterate street dealers understood the new system within
a few minutes.
A law that requires exclusive use of SI units for legal business was
also planned by the U.S. Congress in 1975, but for some mysterious
reasons, the originally required use of SI units was weakened into a
recommended use. Well, a recommendation given in a law is just a joke,
nothing that deserves to be called a law.
U.S. congress has the right to require exclusive use of the metric
system, as stated in section 8 of the U.S. constitution: "The Congress
shall have power to [...] fix the Standard of Weights and Measures."
See <URL:http://www.nara.gov/exhall/charters/constitution/conmain.html>.
Most countries have today laws that require exclusive use of SI units
and I hope the U.S. will get one sooner or later, too. This law
simply has to state that other units used in new contracts and
product labels are not valid and will be ignored by courts, etc.
and everyone will change to metric units within a few weeks.
Jim Carr
I am surprised that no engineer has stepped in to point out that the
US *has* gone metric, we just hide it real well. I believe that a
law has been on the books for a long time (i.e. decades to a century)
making the metric system the basis for our system of weights and
measures, but english units were retained for common practice and
trade. More recently, federal law requires the use of metric measure
in a number of areas with 'hardship' exceptions, but I am pretty
sure my dad told me that highway work went metric last year. No
big deal since surveying is all electronic anyway.
We almost changed the highway signs about 5 or 10 years ago, but people
got all excited about the possibility that they would get tickets for
misinterpreting a sign saying 100 and it got stopped. Democracy is like
that....
--
James A. Carr <j...@scri.fsu.edu> | Raw data, like raw sewage, needs
http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac | some processing before it can be
Supercomputer Computations Res. Inst. | spread around. The opposite is
Florida State, Tallahassee FL 32306 | true of theories. -- JAC
Peter Kerr
> Thus, we have the answer to the original questions. The United States
> standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original
> specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot. Specs and
> Bureaucracies live forever. So, the next time you are handed a
> specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be
> exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just
> wide enough to accommodate the back-ends of two war horses.
> > But a "base" of 60 is evenly divisable by quite a few handy integers:
> > 2,3,4,6,10,12,15,30.
> >
> > And 12 inches/foot(or hours/half-day or eggs/basket), as already noted, by:
> > 2,3,4,6
> >
> > Or 24 hours/day:
> > 2,3,4,6,8,12
I think this is the fault of the Babylonians. And with precedents like that
you can't really expect Congress to move too quickly ;-)
> > Of course, this advantage doesn't do squat for multiplication. And of course
> > I can't figure out why there are 5280 feet to a mile. Or 3 feet/yard. And
> > I would have to look up the size of an acre.
It's those damn horses again, 8 furlongs = 1 mile
The length of a plowed furrow, 1 furlong = 220 yards
But now comes some medieval metrication:
1 furlong = 10 chains
1 chain = 100 links
and to cap it off 1 furlong x 1 chain = 1 acre
p'raps someone could provide a reference for the base unit 1 link = 8 inches
was actually the length of some piece of Royal anatomy?...
Our old title deeds are marked by a rubber stamp put there about
metrication time in 1967: 1 chain = 20.12 metres
1 acre = 0.4046 hectares
I guess they decided the difference of 3.2mm per chain was within the
error of placement of most survey pegs on residential subdivisions, and
while 8 sq ft per acre may sound a lot, when you spread it around the
perimeter it makes interesting geodesy, but not great lawsuits.
James Logajan
Just a clarification: I don't think it is correct to equate "metric" with "SI".
Even in physics, the leading "metric" science, most all theoretical EM work
is done in cgs, not mks. This difference leads to different base units for
many derived units, like magnetism (gauss vs. tesla), force (dyne vs. newton),
power (erg/sec vs. watt), etc. (Also Maxwells equations are "simpler" in cgs.)
One would also expect a "rationalized" set of units to consist of some
unmodifed base words (meter, gram, second) to which the appropriate prefix
is prepended: centimeter, kilogram, millisecond, etc. But both the SI mks
and old guard physicists units of choice fail in this regard:
meter kilo-gram second (mks)
centi-meter gram second (cgs)
Why didn't an mgs system get adopted?
Stephen Baynes
Peter Kerr (p.k...@auckland.ac.nz) wrote:
: bor...@interlog.com (Boris Mohar) wrote:
: > Which reminds me.. Banana sockets are to be spaced 3/4" apart
: > EXACTLY!
: > ALLWAYS!
: Not 19.05mm?
: Nah, a 3/4" spanner = a 19mm spanner for all mechanical work,
: but a 1/2" spanner != 13mm, well not quite, most times...
Are you refering to AF or Whitworth for the imperial spanner sizes?
Sean Stanley-Adams
Bill Arnett wrote:
>
> Maybe the USA should make a deal with the rest of the world: we'll go
> metric if you'll learn to speak English.
Do you call what the Americans speak English :)
Sean Stanley-Adams
Ketil Albertsen wrote:
>
> timo:
>
> > funniest thing is to see man page of some gadget say
> > ``Size: 2.0"x4.0" (50.83045x101.5832 mm)''
>
> An inch is defined to be exactly 25.4 mm, which would make it
> 50.8 x 101.6 mm exactly.
>
> Another one that made me laugh out loud a few years ago when I found
> boxes of Californian rasins in our supermarket here in Norway (which
> has been 100% metric "always", if anyone is in doubt) marked with a
> huge, yellow banner: "Now: Metric pack!"
>
> And the size of the package? 227g!!
>
> (A year later they had changed the size to 250g, though)
>
> ketil
The best ever though was here in South Africa a few years ago. When Big
Brother went metric, he was serious about itand imposed severe penalties
for non-compliance. For over a week when reporting upon a certain
nuclear accident in the US, the South African Broadcasting Corporation
insisted upon referring to Five Kilometre Island.........
Sean Adams
Ketil Albertsen
Bernhard Schopper
Markus Kuhn <ku...@cs.purdue.edu> wrote:
>IBM
>probably assumed that a metric name like "90 mm floppy" is much too
>confusing for the American customer.
How about a 180 mm ding-dong??
;^)
Bernie
Markus Kuhn
Jim Carr wrote:
> More recently, federal law requires the use of metric measure
> in a number of areas with 'hardship' exceptions,
I just did some Web search on this:
From <URL:http://www.osha-slc.gov/OshDoc/Directive_data/
DIRECT_19911118B.html>:
1. The Metric Conversion Act of 1975 stated that the policy
of the United States shall be to coordinate and plan the
increasing use of the metric system in the United States.
2. On August 23, 1988, the President signed the Omnibus
Trade and Competitiveness Act (OTC Act) of 1988, which
amended the Metric Conversion Act of 1975 to declare:
a. That the metric system of measurement is the preferred
system of weights and measures for United States trade
and commerce;
b. That each Federal agency, by a date certain and to the
extent economically feasible by the end of fiscal year
1992, will use the metric system of measurement in its
procurements, grants and other business related
activities (unless metric usage is impractical or
would have an adverse impact on the market share of
U.S. firms); and
c. That agencies will seek out ways to increase
understanding of the metric system of measurement
through educational information and guidance in
Government publications.
3. On July 25, 1991, the President signed Executive Order
12770, Metric Usage in Federal Government Programs, to
implement the metric provisions of the OTC Act.
As a consequence, all except three U.S. states have already switched
their highway construction projects to metric systems, all new DoD
weapon projects are metric, all new federal buildings are now designed
in metric units, etc. You can find a lot of links to web pages
explaining the recent metrification progress of various government
programs on <URL:http://lamar.ColoState.EDU/~hillger/>.
tc...@us1.ibm.com
In <pelle.8...@snakemail.hut.fi>, pe...@lk-hp-33.hut.fi (timo.pelkonen) writes:
>tc...@us1.ibm.com writes:
>
>>1 foot can be divided into halfs, thirds, forths sixths or twelths without
>>using fractions.
>
>those who are metric don't use fractions..
Gee, then why do you have decimal points.
Tony
Gene Fornario
>in a number of areas with 'hardship' exceptions, but I am pretty
>sure my dad told me that highway work went metric last year. No
>big deal since surveying is all electronic anyway.
In the state of Delaware, I noticed that a bypass that was completed last
year, uses kilometer markers instead of the usual mileage markers. This
bypass is on Rt. 13 near Smryna.
Gene--
Stefan Axelsson
j...@ibms48.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Carr) writes:
>sure my dad told me that highway work went metric last year. No
>big deal since surveying is all electronic anyway.
Yeah, we made a bit of fun of the imperial system while talking to a
female engineer who superwised roadwork in Sinks Canyon, WY last
summer, and when we asked her how many "miles" the road was to be, she
answered 2.1 kilometres... And that here "boys" had a hard time with
that and had to convert everything to get a grip on the numbers. We
were also told however, that the width was still in feet... ;-)
Regards,
--
Stefan Axelsson, Chalmers University of Technology,
d7s...@dtek.chalmers.se Sweden
Stefan Axelsson
Sean Stanley-Adams <se...@corp2.mck.co.za> writes:
Doesn't matter, I speak both the Queens English, and what ever you
Yanks call it. Now you promise that I don't have to hear about another
inch, foot, ounce, and deg fahrenheit again ever? I've keept my end of
the bargain... ;-)
Lawrence Crowl
In article <wa2iseDz...@netcom.com>,
Robert Casey <wa2...@netcom.com> wrote:
>An inch is defined as equal to 2.54 cm.
It depends on which inch you're talking about. Starting about 1860,
the U.S. inch was 1/39.37 meters (2.5400050800101603 cm). In about
1960, the inch was "rationalized" to 2.54 cm, but a for the purposes of
surveying, the inch remains 2.5400050800101603 cm. The reason for
retaining the survey inch is that land deeds are specified in inches
and if inches were to change, propery boundaries would change
significantly. This was deemed an excessive burden. :-)
--
Lawrence Crowl 415-786-6146 Developer Products, SunSoft
Lawrenc...@Eng.Sun.Com 2550 Garcia Avenue, UMPK16-303
http://www.cs.orst.edu/~crowl/ Mountain View, California, 94043
Lawrence Crowl
In article <546gc3$2...@news.fsu.edu>, Jim Carr <j...@ibms48.scri.fsu.edu> wrote:
>I am surprised that no engineer has stepped in to point out that the
>US *has* gone metric, we just hide it real well. I believe that a
>law has been on the books for a long time (i.e. decades to a century)
>making the metric system the basis for our system of weights and
>measures, but english units were retained for common practice and
>trade.
The law was written about 1860 (1861?). It was "clarified" about 1869.
The reason for the law is that the physical standards in the various
customs houses did not agree with sufficient accuracy for the emerging
requirements of an industrializing U.S. Rather than go to the effort
of developing new physical standards, the U.S. government chose to base
the refined U.S. units on the extremely careful work done to develop
physical standards for the metric system.
Lawrence Crowl
Someone wrote:
>>But a "base" of 60 is evenly divisable by quite a few handy integers:
>>2,3,4,6,10,12,15,30.
>>
>>And 12 inches/foot(or hours/half-day or eggs/basket), as already noted, by:
>>2,3,4,6
>>
>>Or 24 hours/day:
>>2,3,4,6,8,12
In article <p.kerr-1810...@news.auckland.ac.nz>,
Peter Kerr <p.k...@auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
>I think this is the fault of the Babylonians. And with precedents like that
>you can't really expect Congress to move too quickly ;-)
I think the divisions of time were developed by the Babylonians, but
that the Romans were responsible for the division of feet and pounds
into 12. Inch and ounce are derived from the Latin uncia, meaning a
twelfth. Before someone points out that pounds have 16 ounces, the
Roman pound (and Troy) do have 12 ounces.
>>Of course, this advantage doesn't do squat for multiplication. And of course
>>I can't figure out why there are 5280 feet to a mile. Or 3 feet/yard. And
>>I would have to look up the size of an acre.
>
>It's those damn horses again, 8 furlongs = 1 mile
>The length of a plowed furrow, 1 furlong = 220 yards
The furlong is 40 rods long. The rod being a very ancient unit of
measure.
The term mile is from the Latin "mille passus", meaning 1000 paces.
Each pace was about 5 feet, and the mile was 5000 feet. After the
Romans left Britain, the Roman mile was extended to be a whole multiple
of the furlong. (Plowing being more important than measuring one's
progress on a decayed Roman road.)
>But now comes some medieval metrication:
> 1 furlong = 10 chains
> 1 chain = 100 links
>and to cap it off 1 furlong x 1 chain = 1 acre
I think the chain was developed too late to define an acre. More
correct, I think, is 1 acre = 4 rods x 1 furlong = 4 rods x 40 rods.
Lawrence Crowl
In article <3266E6...@cs.purdue.edu>,
Markus Kuhn <ku...@cs.purdue.edu> wrote:
>Most countries have today laws that require exclusive use of SI units
>and I hope the U.S. will get one sooner or later, too. This law
>simply has to state that other units used in new contracts and
>product labels are not valid and will be ignored by courts, etc.
>and everyone will change to metric units within a few weeks.
Such a law will never pass. It presumes an authoritarian capacity that
just doesn't exist. The very idea of making common practice illegal
without good reason goes against the grain of the U.S. culture. (And
no, "everybody else does it" is not good enough.)
The U.S. will eventually be mostly metric. But it won't happen by fiat.
Lawrence Crowl
In article <amos.845464870@hub>, Amos Shapir <am...@nsof.co.il> wrote:
>But the UK is in close contact with the rest of Europe, while in
>the USA, most residents have never left their state, let alone travel to
>other countries.
I do not believe this statement is true. You'd be hard pressed to find
a significant fraction of U.S. residents that have never left their
state. I would not argue that most residents have traveled to other
countries, but even that is not clear.
>It seems most Americans do not feel there's any compelling reason to
>convert.
I support metrification, and I haven't seen a compelling reason to
switch. I've seen some good ones. I haven't seen any compelling
reasons. Americans are reasonable people. Give us a compelling reason
and we'll switch. Just keep in mind that what is compelling in Israel
or Belgium is not necessarily compelling in the U.S.
John Torset
>Maybe the USA should make a deal with the rest of the world: we'll go
>think both would be big wins for the world as a whole.)
I think the (young) people in most countries learn how to read, write and speak
English. Not as good as the "native" English speaking people, but good enough
to go along. :-)
So now it's up to USA to go metric.
Not that it matter that mutch except for Canada and Mexico. :-)
<sb>
<sb>John Torset
<sb>joh...@iceonline.com
<sb>AMIGA 4000
<sb>
John Torset
>Steve Baker wrote:
>> I agree. The only exception I find with using metric comes
>> from celestial navigation (boats) Latitude and Longitude
>> do have a basis of fact with the NAUTICAL mile.
>Just have a look at the SI Standard, where the metric system is
>defined: The nautical mile is defined there as exactly 1852 m and
>its use is allowed for navigation, along with a few related
>units (knots, etc.). Just look at section IV.2.
Actually a nautical mile was defined as 1'
( 1' = 1 Dist. minute = 1 deg. / 60 min )
At the time earth circumference was defined as 40000 Km.
(Not around equator, if I remember correct, but across the polar caps.)
That makes one nautical mile to be:
'( 40000Km / ( 360 deg. * 60 min )' = 1.85185185... Km ~ 1851.85 m
And to make it easy we say 1852 m.
Time measurement is not quite metric is it with 24 h/day and 60 min/h
(except seconds) ?! :-)
Paul Schlyter
In article <53vt3s$3...@gatekeeper.origin-at.co.uk>,
Phil Cowley <pco...@origin-at.co.uk> wrote:
>>Which reminds me of something I once saw, an advertisement for 88.9
>> mm floppies. Alas, the standard tells us they are 90 mm exactly.
>
> 90mm floppies?????
>
> Oh you mean 3 1/2 inch floppies! The successor to he 5 1/4 INCH and
> were floppy!
Perhaps we should call them 3.5 inch hard disks? :-)
--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Schlyter, Swedish Amateur Astronomer's Society (SAAF)
Grev Turegatan 40, S-114 38 Stockholm, SWEDEN
e-mail: pau...@saaf.se p...@home.ausys.se
Tohru Ohnuki
In article <jameslDz...@netcom.com>, jam...@netcom.com (James Logajan)
wrote:
[snip other measures]
> Of course, this advantage doesn't do squat for multiplication. And of course
> I can't figure out why there are 5280 feet to a mile. Or 3 feet/yard. And
> I would have to look up the size of an acre.
I heard that the mile is a thousand strides for a Roman, thus "mille." I've
also heard that an acre was how much a man could plow in a day
--
Tohru sagt,"Spork!"
Markus Kuhn
John Torset wrote:
> Time measurement is not quite metric is it with 24 h/day and 60 min/h
> (except seconds) ?! :-)
Interesting: It seems that for some people "metric" is a word that
describes anything based on a factor of 10 in some way. I have even
seen the funny concept of "metric money" being mentioned here, and may
be even the arabic numbers that we use are "metric" ... ;-)
About time: The only real SI unit of time is the second. There are
two important astronomical periodic events that are of especial interest
for people living on planet earth: the earth day (~86.4 ks) and the
earth year (~31.56 Ms). Both periods are defined by nature and both
periods are much less constant than the best clocks we have.
All other subdivisions of time (minutes, hours, weeks, months, quaters,
decades, centuries) are just there for historical convenience reasons.
If you do calculations with SI units, you first of all transform times
given in these units into seconds and then enjoy the easy calculations
in a coherent system of units.
But as we are talking about standardized representations of time, there
is one thing which is very different in the U.S. from how time is
written in most other countries: The A.M./P.M. notation. In most
countries, a numerically written time is between 00:00 and 23:59. In the
U.S., only computer programmers and the military seem to prefer this
modern and much more convenient time notation. See also
http://www.ft.uni-erlangen.de/~mskuhn/iso-time.html
if you are more interested in the standard way of writing date and time
numerically (but please don't call this "metric time" ;-).
Gary A. Wiltshire
Sean Stanley-Adams <se...@corp2.mck.co.za> wrote:
>Bill Arnett wrote:
>>
>> Maybe the USA should make a deal with the rest of the world: we'll go
>> metric if you'll learn to speak English.
>Do you call what the Americans speak English :)
In point of fact, the dialects of colonial peoples are almost
invariably more conservative than those of the stay-at-homes. If you
want to hear Elizabethan English, go to the Ozarks. Go to rural
Quebec for 18th century French, or to Iceland for fossilized North
Germanic.
Sorry for the lecture, but I get so sick of Brits telling me how we
have screwed up "their" language. Francophone friends of mine in
Quebec tell the same story about Frenchmen.
--- Gary Wiltshire
Rick Nyman
pco...@origin-at.co.uk (Phil Cowley) wrote:
>90mm floppies?????
>
>Oh you mean 3 1/2 inch floppies! The successor to he 5 1/4 INCH and
>the 8 INCH floppies.... Oh those were the days when floppies really
>were floppy!
Hey, they still are - the case may not be, but the disk still is. Just
throw a bad one against the floor pretty hard to crack the case open and
you can get the disk out pretty easily. (Note that you may lose some data
if you do this to a good disk ;-)
--
Rick Nyman <rny...@mail.serve.com>
http://www.serve.com/rnyman (Last changed: 9/29/96)
Traveling with Northrop Grumman & the Post Office in: Billings, MT
2 (3?) words about my email account: NO SPAM! Thanks.
Dik T. Winter
In article <549mr1$d...@engnews2.Eng.Sun.COM> cr...@philmont.eng.sun.com (Lawrence Crowl) writes:
> The law was written about 1860 (1861?). It was "clarified" about 1869.
> Rather than go to the effort
> of developing new physical standards, the U.S. government chose to base
> the refined U.S. units on the extremely careful work done to develop
> physical standards for the metric system.
Actually the same has happened in the U.K. albeit a bit later: Weights
and Measures Bill (G.B.), 1963, HC 70. Although we know already that
the U.S. gallon is different from the U.K. gallon, that bill also made
a difference between the U.K. pound (0.45359237 kg exactly) and the
U.S. pound (0.4535924277 kg, although I do not know the exact value).
--
dik t. winter, cwi, kruislaan 413, 1098 sj amsterdam, nederland, +31205924131
home: bovenover 215, 1025 jn amsterdam, nederland; http://www.cwi.nl/~dik/
Michael Shields
In article <53uka2$u...@rtpnews.raleigh.ibm.com>, <tc...@us1.ibm.com> wrote:
> Also there are some advantages to some english units.
>
> 1 foot can be divided into halfs, thirds, forths sixths or twelths without
> using fractions.
But an inch cannot. Nor can a mile.
English units seem especially awkward when there are close tolerances
involved. Is 13/16 +/- .001" really a convenient measurement?
--
Shields, CrossLink.
Achim Recktenwald
John Torset wrote:
>
> >Maybe the USA should make a deal with the rest of the world: we'll go
> >think both would be big wins for the world as a whole.)
>
> I think the (young) people in most countries learn how to read, write and speak
> English. Not as good as the "native" English speaking people, but good enough
> to go along. :-)
>
> So now it's up to USA to go metric.
>
> Not that it matter that mutch except for Canada and Mexico. :-)
>
The US is the now the only country officially (!!) still using imperial
units, with the exception of some small African country whose name I
have forgotten.
Achim
H. Peter Anvin
Followup to: <326938...@cs.purdue.edu>
By author: Markus Kuhn <ku...@cs.purdue.edu>
In newsgroup: comp.std.internat
>
> John Torset wrote:
> > Time measurement is not quite metric is it with 24 h/day and 60 min/h
> > (except seconds) ?! :-)
>
> Interesting: It seems that for some people "metric" is a word that
> describes anything based on a factor of 10 in some way. I have even
> seen the funny concept of "metric money" being mentioned here, and may
> be even the arabic numbers that we use are "metric" ... ;-)
>
> About time: The only real SI unit of time is the second. There are
> two important astronomical periodic events that are of especial interest
> for people living on planet earth: the earth day (~86.4 ks) and the
> earth year (~31.56 Ms). Both periods are defined by nature and both
> periods are much less constant than the best clocks we have.
>
Historical note: When the (original) Metric System was invented during
the French Revolution there was a proposal to decimalize time as
well. A 10-day-week calendar was invented (which was discontinued by
Napoleon), and the proposal was on the table to have 1 day = 10 hours
= 10x100 minutes = 10x100x100 seconds. This works out to, exactly:
1 decimal hour = 2.4 hours = 2 hours 24 minutes
1 decimal minute = 1.44 minutes = 1 minute 26.4 seconds
1 decimal second = 0.864 seconds
The decision for implementation was to be made in -- I believe --
1792, but by that time the Revolution had already turned to other,
more gruesome things.
A couple of church clocks were built to the anticipated standard,
though.
Interesting enough, the decimal time system fits rather well with many
classes of human activity. I personally find one based on 100 primany
units (call them "centons") per day to be more suitable:
10 centons = 2.4 hours = 2 hours 24 minutes = "a couple of hours"
1 centon = 14.40 minutes = 14 minutes 24 seconds = approx 15 minutes
0.1 centon = 1.44 minutes = 1 minute 26.4 seconds = approx 1 minute
0.01 centon = 8.64 seconds = approx 10 seconds (or 1/7 minute)
0.001 centon = 0.864 seconds = approx 1 second
People tend to schedule most activities on even multiples of 15
minutes, so a centon-based time system would work rather well; one day
of 24x4 = 96 15-minutes is replaced by 100 centons. The hard part,
however, would be that the second -- and with it, most of the SI
system -- would suddenly be an anachronism...
-hpa "31.023 centons, Universal Time"
--
Not speaking for Transmeta in any shape, way, or form.
Paul Schlyter
Bastin,kim (MU...@lure.latrobe.edu.au) wrote:
> But in long-since-metric Sweden I found one non-metric incongruity:
> builders and carpenters measure timber sizes in... inches! or they
> did then - maybe they've gone metric since.
They haven't -- and the worst thing is that they're using ENGLISH
inches instead of Swedish inches.... :-)
[ 1 Swedish inch = 24.75 mm = 0.9744... English inches ]
Back when Sweden went metric, some 100+ years ago, I don't think
English inches hardly was used at all. We used Swedish inches
(of which there were a few varieties -- only the 24.75 mm variety
seem to have survived to this day), plus several varieties of
German inches (of which there were over a dozen -- remember that
what we call Germany today didn't exist then -- instead there were
many small independent countries: Bayern, Prussia, etc.
Of course the advantage of going from this mess to metric units was
quite substantial. At least the English-speaking world of today are
in complete agreement over the size of an inch/etc, as well as over
exact conversion factors to metric units.
In Sweden we still have some traces of our old feet and inches: the
most common gauge of our narrow-gauge railways is 891 mm (there is
still one such railway in regular use here - Roslagsbanan - which
starts in Stockholm and goes North to North-East for some 50 km.
It's used for local commuter traffic only, and recently got brand new
cars and engines). The 891 mm raiway gauge does not, to the best of
my knowledge, exist in any other country. The reason is that 891 mm
is exactly three old Swedish feet.
Michael Dworetsky
In article <jameslDz...@netcom.com>
jam...@netcom.com (James Logajan) writes:
[snip]
>
>Of course, this advantage doesn't do squat for multiplication. And of course
>I can't figure out why there are 5280 feet to a mile. Or 3 feet/yard. And
>I would have to look up the size of an acre.
>
A statute mile of 5280 feet is the length of one arc-minute of longitude
at the latitude of Greenwich (the Royal Observatory), England. A nautical
mile (6080 feet) is, near enough for celestial navigation purposes, the
average length of one arc-minute (1/60 * 1/360) of a great circle arc
anywhere on the Earth's surface. But I too have to look up the size of
one acre, which is 4840 square yards--whatever those are.
--
Mike Dworetsky, Department of Physics | Bismark's law: The less people
& Astronomy, University College London | know about how sausages and laws
Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT UK | are made, the better they'll
email: m...@star.ucl.ac.uk | sleep at night.
Peter Kerr
> : Not 19.05mm?
> : Nah, a 3/4" spanner = a 19mm spanner for all mechanical work,
> : but a 1/2" spanner != 13mm, well not quite, most times...
>
> Are you refering to AF or Whitworth for the imperial spanner sizes?
>
Whitworth? I though only the French still used that ;-)
at least Renault were until quite recently using some French
"metric" standard bolts that measured suspiciously close to Whitworth.
--
Peter Kerr bodger
School of Music chandler
University of Auckland NZ neo-Luddite
Peter Kerr
> >
> > And very nominal they are too. Timber sizes are the size before planing so
> > the actual timber size is something else.
>
> Not any more. Nowdays all this in mm.
>
The NZ Standard for machined planed timber allows a "nominal" size
specified before machining, with maximum amounts that can be removed.
So a 4 x 2 = 100 x 50 rough sawn = 94 x 47 actual measure machined.
But tailors, and police suspect descriptions use cm.
Miles Gentry
The US won't go metric until the electric car is a mass produced reality, and
universities get more money for undergraduate programs :-)
Antoine Leca
Lawrence Crowl wrote:
> I think the divisions of time were developed by the Babylonians, but
> that the Romans were responsible for the division of feet and pounds
> into 12. Inch and ounce are derived from the Latin uncia, meaning a
> twelfth.
I'm curious from where comes this meaning.
For what I know, eleventh=unodecimo,-a, simplified into the scheme
uncim in many romance languages (the e should be breve, I think),
which look like uncia to me (or is it hazard ?).
OTOH, twelfth=duodecimo,-a, and I don't see the parallel with uncia.
Antoine
Gerhild Kirchweger
tc...@us1.ibm.com wrote:
: In <pelle.8...@snakemail.hut.fi>, pe...@lk-hp-33.hut.fi (timo.pelkonen) writes:
: >tc...@us1.ibm.com writes:
: >
: >>1 foot can be divided into halfs, thirds, forths sixths or twelths without
: >>using fractions.
: >
: >those who are metric don't use fractions..
:
: Gee, then why do you have decimal points.
Well, we don't. We use commas ;-))))
--
oo_oo_oo_oo_oo_oo_oo_oo_oo Gerhild Kirchweger oo_oo_oo_oo_oo_oo_oo_oo_oo
|____ Department of Internal Combustion Engines and Thermodynamics ____|
|__ Graz University of Technology/ Austria ___Tel. ++43 316 873 7212___|
oo_oo_oo_o http://fvkma.tu-graz.ac.at/~gerhild/gerhild.html _oo_oo_oo_oo
Gene Fornario
A humorous note to this discussion:
I notice an advert for a local tavern advertising it's
"Oktoberfest.":
Choose from five draught Oktoberfest beers
Drink from Liter-sized mugs
Dance to a German Um-pah-pah Band
Think you are in Munich
(well maybe after a couple of Liters :)
Chris Mills
In article <billa-ya02318000...@news.znet.com>, bi...@znet.com (Bill Arnett) says:
>
>Maybe the USA should make a deal with the rest of the world: we'll go
>metric if you'll learn to speak English. (This is only half joking; I
>think both would be big wins for the world as a whole.)
>
as meter and litre as liter) so stop preaching to the world when YOU
can't get things right. (This is not a flame it is just something I feel
VERY strongly about)
Darren Garrison
Gel...@port.ac.uk (Chris Mills) wrote:
Actually, you have it backwards. Here in the US at least, we
pronounce meter as "met-er," not as "met-re." (In other words, the
US pronounciation rhymes with "beat her" not with "oak tree") Same
with liter, which is not pronounced "let-re." So it makes MUCH more
sense to spell it the way we do when we pronounce it the way we do.
If you pronounce the words as met-re and lit-re, then your spelling is
better for you. If you don't, then it isn't.
Markus Kuhn
Darren Garrison wrote:
> Actually, you have it backwards. Here in the US at least, we
> pronounce meter as "met-er," not as "met-re." (In other words, the
> US pronounciation rhymes with "beat her" not with "oak tree") Same
> with liter, which is not pronounced "let-re." So it makes MUCH more
> sense to spell it the way we do when we pronounce it the way we do.
> If you pronounce the words as met-re and lit-re, then your spelling is
> better for you. If you don't, then it isn't.
Just as a remark: The German words are also "meter" and "liter". The
spelling of these two words varies slightly from language to language
(French: metre/litre, English: both variants (US/GB)).
How about other languages?
Stan Bischof
Chris Mills (Gel...@port.ac.uk) wrote:
:
: You Yanks don't speakor write proper English (eg you spell metre
: can't get things right. (This is not a flame it is just something I feel
: VERY strongly about)
No flame intended either, but the "re" spellings are _French_ not English.
Check the etymology.
Stan "we speak American here- a dialect of English" Bischof
st...@sr.hp.com
Jim Carr
m...@zuaxp0.star.ucl.ac.uk (Michael Dworetsky) writes:
>
> .... But I too have to look up the size of
Oh come on, just find a convenient king and measure him. That's what
you folks keep royalty around for, isn't it?
Anyway, an acre is a chain*furlong. Oh, and a furlong is 10 chains,
while a chain is 4 rods, just in case you did not remember. ;-)
I liked that comment about rounding error during conversion, given
that the bulk of the US was originally surveyed with chains, which
would kink, and with measurements made to the nearest link (100 links
to a 66' chain, but 80 chains to the mile, a quasi-metric system).
--
James A. Carr <j...@scri.fsu.edu> | Raw data, like raw sewage, needs
http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac | some processing before it can be
Supercomputer Computations Res. Inst. | spread around. The opposite is
Florida State, Tallahassee FL 32306 | true of theories. -- JAC
Dick Brewster
Darren Garrison wrote:
>
> Gel...@port.ac.uk (Chris Mills) wrote:
>
> >In article <billa-ya02318000...@news.znet.com>, bi...@znet.com (Bill Arnett) says:
> >>
> >>Maybe the USA should make a deal with the rest of the world: we'll go
> >>metric if you'll learn to speak English. (This is only half joking; I
> >>think both would be big wins for the world as a whole.)
> >>
> >
> >as meter and litre as liter) so stop preaching to the world when YOU
> >can't get things right. (This is not a flame it is just something I feel
> >VERY strongly about)
>
> pronounce meter as "met-er," not as "met-re." (In other words, the
> US pronounciation rhymes with "beat her" not with "oak tree") Same
> with liter, which is not pronounced "let-re." So it makes MUCH more
> sense to spell it the way we do when we pronounce it the way we do.
> If you pronounce the words as met-re and lit-re, then your spelling is
> better for you. If you don't, then it isn't.
The Brits pronounce both words the same as we do, they spell them that
way to suck up to their idols, the French.
7907
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat,sci.physics,sci.engr,sci.astro
Subject: Re: When will the U.S. finally go metric?
Summary:
Expires:
References: <jameslDz...@netcom.com> <jameslDz...@netcom.com> <32637851...@plhp002.comm.mot.com> <p.kerr-1810...@news.auckland.ac.nz>
Sender:
Followup-To:
Distribution:
Organization: Calgary UNIX User's Group
Keywords:
Cc:
In article <p.kerr-1810...@news.auckland.ac.nz>,
Peter Kerr <p.k...@auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
>But now comes some medieval metrication:
> 1 furlong = 10 chains
> 1 chain = 100 links
>and to cap it off 1 furlong x 1 chain = 1 acre
And a cubic foot of water weighs 1000 ounces.
But what about the rest of the non-metric world?
Has the Republic of Tonga gone metric yet?
>
>--
>Peter Kerr bodger
>School of Music chandler
>University of Auckland NZ neo-Luddite
--
-------------------------------------
Keith McClary kmcc...@cuug.ab.ca
Paul B.Andersen
Bill Arnett wrote:
>
> Maybe the USA should make a deal with the rest of the world: we'll go
> metric if you'll learn to speak English. (This is only half joking; I
> think both would be big wins for the world as a whole.)
Why should the rest of the world care if US go metric?
Paul
Anthony Potts
On Mon, 21 Oct 1996, Darren Garrison wrote:
>
> Actually, you have it backwards. Here in the US at least, we
> pronounce meter as "met-er," not as "met-re." (In other words, the
As do we in the UK. Your point?
> US pronounciation rhymes with "beat her" not with "oak tree") Same
> with liter, which is not pronounced "let-re." So it makes MUCH more
> sense to spell it the way we do when we pronounce it the way we do.
> If you pronounce the words as met-re and lit-re, then your spelling is
> better for you. If you don't, then it isn't.
>
What rot. Metre is obviously pronounced the same in both places.
If you want to argue that phonetic spelling is the way to go, then I
suggest that you adopt it wholesale. The fact that you still use correct
spelling in most of your words tells you that it is not the most sensible
way of doing things.
Anthony Potts
CERN, Geneva
Anthony Potts
On Mon, 21 Oct 1996, Dick Brewster wrote:
>
> The Brits pronounce both words the same as we do, they spell them that
> way to suck up to their idols, the French.
>
If you had ever actually studied us British, you would have found that if
we are able to annoy the French, we can.
This includes wars, rugby, and so on. They feel similarly towards us, and
so set fire to our sheep at Calais.
You may thyink that the British and US citizens sometimes feel slightly
antagonistic towards each other, but this is as nothing compared to the
British national sport of French baiting.
Anthony Potts
CERN, Geneva
Darren Garrison
Anthony Potts <po...@cms5.cern.ch> wrote:
I see..... and since when are there innately "correct" and "incorrect"
ways of spelling things. If it works better, why question a change?
I can answer that, actually, the original statement came from someone
who likes to think themselves an eletist for keeping the "proper"
English while we primitive decidant Americans have profaned their
perfect language. Eletist snobbery.
Paul Skoczylas
> Actually, you have it backwards. Here in the US at least, we
> pronounce meter as "met-er," not as "met-re." (In other words, the
> with liter, which is not pronounced "let-re." So it makes MUCH more
> sense to spell it the way we do when we pronounce it the way we do.
> If you pronounce the words as met-re and lit-re, then your spelling is
> better for you. If you don't, then it isn't.
I suppose you want to spell "head" like "hed" and various other things
like that. Noah Webster wanted to do that at the same time he screwed
up a bunch of other words in the English language. He actually had the
support of guys like Ben Franklin, but the popular support wasn't there,
except for the -re to -er changes (centre, theatre) and the -our to -or
changes (colour, neighbour).
The English language is one of the most unique languages in that it is
derived from so many other languages, which is why we have so many weird
spellings and pronunciations. If we look at the words like colour, some
people will say that the original Latin word didn't have a "u", but
English didn't get it from the Latin, we got it from the French.
The point here is that spelling is debateable, and there's not really
any point in arguing about it. Nobody is going to get me to spell metre
like meter or colour like color, and the reverse is true for most
Americans.
My $0.02
-Paul
Anthony Potts
On Tue, 22 Oct 1996, Darren Garrison wrote:
>
> I see..... and since when are there innately "correct" and "incorrect"
> ways of spelling things. If it works better, why question a change?
No, but seeing the word metre, or litre, or so on would lead me to the
correct pronunciation. There is no need to change it if it works fine in
the first place.
> I can answer that, actually, the original statement came from someone
> who likes to think themselves an eletist
No, I think that the word you are searching for is elitist. Even in the
USA.
> for keeping the "proper"
> English while we primitive decidant
Do you mean dissident?
> Americans have profaned their
> perfect language. Eletist snobbery.
>
Again, just being from the US does not free you of all constraints in
literary methods. You still have correct and incorrect spellings.
For example, whichever way you choose to slice it, that red fruit is still
spelled tomato, without the Quaylesque additional e.
If you want to have a language freed from constraints, that's fine. Just
don't expect tobeable to hold your own in a conversation of any depth
though. As a language becomes less well formed, it loses out in precision.
For example, I would read the word meter as very different to the word
metre.
One is a measure of distance, the other is a measure of your poetry, as in
iambic pentameter.
Of course, I could be wrong. Trying to have correct grammar and spelling,
and achieving it are a fair distance apart. It is a very different matter,
though, to insist on thelowes common denominator in language.
Two nations separated by a common language? It would certainly appear so.
Anthony Potts
CERN, Geneva
Gordon Talge
> But what about the rest of the non-metric world?
> Has the Republic of Tonga gone metric yet?
>
> >
> >--
> >Peter Kerr bodger
> >School of Music chandler
> >University of Auckland NZ neo-Luddite
>
> --
> -------------------------------------
> Keith McClary kmcc...@cuug.ab.ca
I thought it was the Kingdom of Tonga. Probably what ever the King or
Queen says goes.
Gordon
Rolf Meier
>> I see..... and since when are there innately "correct" and "incorrect"
>> ways of spelling things. If it works better, why question a change?
Spelling flamewar.
Cool.
________________________________________________________________________
Rolf Meier usual dislaimer applies
Bill Arnett
Because we exchange a lot of hardware which would interoperate a whole lot
better and be cheaper to manufacture if everything were done in the same
units. This is not an insignificant cost, probably many billions of
dollars per year.
--
Bill Arnett bi...@znet.com http://www.seds.org/billa/
"I know that I am mortal and the creature of a day; but when I
search out the massed wheeling circles of the stars, my feet no
longer touch the earth, but, side by side with Zeus himself, I
take my fill of ambrosia, the food of the gods." -- Ptolemy
Bill Arnett
In article <54ggon$6...@hawk.ee.port.ac.uk>, Gel...@port.ac.uk (Chris
Mills) wrote:
> In article <billa-ya02318000...@news.znet.com>,
bi...@znet.com (Bill Arnett) says:
> >
> >Maybe the USA should make a deal with the rest of the world: we'll go
> >metric if you'll learn to speak English. (This is only half joking; I
> >think both would be big wins for the world as a whole.)
> >
>
> You Yanks don't speakor write proper English ...
Maybe not but we do manage to communicate with our British friends. The
grammarians can argue about the fine points but the rest of us seem to get
along just fine.
But the same cannot, obviously, be said for the rest of the world. I can't
communicate with anyone who doesn't speak one of the languages I happen to
know (and that is a damn short list :-( ) Obviously, life would be a lot
easier if everyone had one language in common (but not necessarily to the
exclusion of other additional languages). English, despite its
multitudinous faults, is probably the most widely spoken language at the
present time and hence the natural choice as the standard. I would
actually prefer Esperanto or some other conciously designed and regular
language but English will do.
Markus Kuhn
I have last week joined the U.S. Metric Association, a club of people
who try to get the SI units more widely used in the USA. Membership
costs just $10 for students and $30 for others per year. For this, you
get a bimonthly newsletter "Metric Today" with recent news about for
instance government, education, media and industry activity concerning
U.S. metrification.
In case you also want to join them, just send the cheque and your postal
address to
U.S. Metric Association
10245 Andasol Avenue
Northridge CA 91325-1504
I got my first two issues of the very interesting newsletter within 5
days. A membership application form is also on their home page
http://lamar.ColoState.EDU/~hillger/
and for a self-addressed large envelope with 55 cents postage you can
get a sample copy of the newsletter.
Another thing:
I checked yesterday in the Purdue library the ANSI X3.171-1989 standard
that specifies the so-called 3.5" floppy disk. The standard explicitly
says that the original design of this disk format was done entirely in
SI units and that the inch units given in addition to the metric
dimensions in the standard are only provided for the convenience of U.S.
users. The SI units are the authoritive dimensions and the given inch
dimensions should not be converted back to SI units.
The dimension that is closest to 3.5 inch and that gave this disk the
commonly used U.S. nickname is the width of the plastic package. This
dimension is specified as 90.0 mm (3.54 in). Also all other dimensions
in the standard are nicely round millimeter lengths, as I already
guessed from measuring a sample disk.
Darren Garrison
Anthony Potts <po...@cms5.cern.ch> wrote:
>On Tue, 22 Oct 1996, Darren Garrison wrote:
>
>>
>> I see..... and since when are there innately "correct" and "incorrect"
>> ways of spelling things. If it works better, why question a change?
>
>
>No, but seeing the word metre, or litre, or so on would lead me to the
>correct pronunciation. There is no need to change it if it works fine in
>the first place.
>
That is entirely because you were raised in a society that uses that
spelling. The spelling is not a visual cue to its pronunciation, it
is one of those exceptions that you must memorize. Like in metre,
litre, theatre, you learn to pronunce them NOT as they are spelled,
but as meter, liter, and theater.
>> I can answer that, actually, the original statement came from someone
>> who likes to think themselves an eletist
>
>No, I think that the word you are searching for is elitist. Even in the
>USA.
Yes, typo.
>
>> for keeping the "proper"
>> English while we primitive decidant
>
>Do you mean dissident?
>
No, I do not. I meant decadent.
>> Americans have profaned their
>> perfect language. Eletist snobbery.
>>
>Again, just being from the US does not free you of all constraints in
>literary methods. You still have correct and incorrect spellings.
No, you cannot have fundamentaly correct and incorrect spellings of
words. Yes, you can have spelling errors, such as my "eletist" and
"decidant" above, but if the convention here is that meter is spelled
meter, then the correct spelling for meter is meter. The same is true
in the UK. If the convention is that metre is spelled, then the
correct spelling for metre is metre. Thinking that one is
fundamentaly, innately superior to the other is being ethnocentric.
(read closer to the end to see why I then justify "meter" and such
over "metre" and such.) Languages are high level abstractions, purely
symbolic. If you understand the symbols that you use, and your
intended audence understands your meaning from those symbols, then
those symbols have served their propose. But there is the question of
consistancy and ease of use of those symbols, which will effect the
base population that can actuall follow what you say. (Saying,
"tree", for instance, is more efficient than saying
"bigthingwithbrowntrunkandlimbsandgreenleavesthatchangecolorsandfalloffinthewinter.)
>
>For example, whichever way you choose to slice it, that red fruit is still
>spelled tomato, without the Quaylesque additional e.
>
>If you want to have a language freed from constraints, that's fine. Just
>don't expect tobeable to hold your own in a conversation of any depth
>though. As a language becomes less well formed, it loses out in precision.
>
>For example, I would read the word meter as very different to the word
>metre.
>
>One is a measure of distance, the other is a measure of your poetry, as in
>iambic pentameter.
Hah! Caught you on that one. Meter in poetry, as in iambic
pentameter, is exactly the same word as in a "metre." Both are a unit
of measurement, and both I'm sure share a common origin. I suppose,
then, it should be iambic pentametre. That particular inconsistancy
in UK English does not exist in US English.
>
>Of course, I could be wrong. Trying to have correct grammar and spelling,
>and achieving it are a fair distance apart. It is a very different matter,
>though, to insist on thelowes common denominator in language.
>
>Two nations separated by a common language? It would certainly appear so.
The thing you have to realize is (and, like your original post, this
wasn't intended as a flame.) Is that ALL current languages are
derivitive. There are no pristine languages left in the world, and
there probably have not been for untold thousands of years. All are
bult upon mixtures of other languages. Languages mix and gain words,
among other ways, from colonizations, invasions, and trade. One
example that comes to mind is an African term describing a particular
species of primate; they called it the Orang-Utan. Later, that was
de-hyphenalized (<-----see, new word) into orangutan. And most of the
time, I hear it pronounced as "o-rang-a-tang." And one could come up
with any number of terms that have been borrowed from other languages
and folded into English. English is one of the most dirivative
languages in the world; it absorbs and produces words constantly.
That makes among the most flexable languages in the world, but that
also makes it one of the most difficult to learn. British children
have to learn that "re" is pronounced "re" unless it is in metre,
litre, theatre, or the such, in which case it is pronounced "er."
Same in both countries for words like knife, or phone, which should
logically be spelled nife and fone. And, as another post implied, I
do think that English would be better off without such contradictions
and redundancies. There should also be something done about words
that sound the same, like two, too, and to. And lie and lye. And
hear and here. And bear and bare. Make tenses and numbers more
logical, no more "I am, I was, I will be, you are" such of thing.
Change the alphabet, so that Cindy and Candy will not start with the
same letter for different sounds. It won't (screwy word, there, too.
Won't means will not? Why? Why not wil'nt? Just off the top of my
head, there is probably some German in the explanation) happen, but it
would be nice.
But some changes will happen. Words do evolve, change so that they
come closer to fitting the general pattern of the language by which
these words have been adopted. Thus, the many Roman and German and
Latin and Greek and Hebrew and French and Japaneese and Korean and
Vietnamese and African and so on words that enter English slowly but
surely become more and more like the general base of English or
whatever the adoptive language. And what is wrong with that? Why
should a language be frozen at a particular point, artificialy forced
to cease evolving? Should we be forced to all speak the English of
Chaucer? That of King James? That of King Author? That of Queen
Elizabeth II? That of Benny Hill? And which dialect of UK English?
One from London? One from Liverpool? At what point would be the
correct English, upon which no new words could be added, and from
which no new spellings could be adapted?
I prefer the words "meter", "liter", and "theater" because there are
closer to the conventional English spelling rules, and not exceptions
to those rules that you have to memorize in grade school. "Metre",
"litre", and "theatre" are not Anglicized, but retain close to the
original French spellings. And that, not ethnocentrism, is why I
prefer the former (or should that be "formre") spellings to the
latter. (latre.) When the new words more closely match the
conventions of the new language, and less closely match the language
from which those words were derived, then those words have a more
logical and rational place in that language, making it easier
(easire) to learn, and will, in this case, be more truly English than
the Frenchier (another new word) spellings.
Dick Brewster
Anthony, Please excuse me for leaving off the smiley face for the humor
impaired... Or did I just bite into a piece of smelly old bait?