Dear John and All,
Thanks for sharing this delightful story. I have been using a similar story
in my metric talks for years, but in my case the point I'm trying to make is
about the nature of measuring conservatism.
This is especially important to groups of scientists when they create new
concepts for quantities and their units.
Scientists often have no idea of the implications of casually creating new
unit names, and then randomly generating abbreviations for them. The barn is
one of my pet hates as it is so clearly the result of a joke (he couldn't
hit the side of a barn), that became jargon, and then became established by
use within the atomic physics community, while the rest of us wonder what
they are talking about.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin CAMS
Geelong, Australia
on 07.01.2001 02.04, kilopascal at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> THE SPACE SHUTTLE AND TWO HORSE'S BUMS
>
> The Standard railway gauge in the USA (and in Britain) is 4ft 8 1/2 ins. An
> odd number, one might think. Why not 5ft? Or 7ft (ask I K Brunel)?
<snip>
