[USMA:48338] SEG Tentative Metric Standard

[John M. Steele]

I am always interested in the metric standards of other professional societies 
(if they are free, I'm not $50 interested).  I ran across this. SEG is the 
Society of Exploration Geophysicists, and this tentative metric standard was 
published in 1980.
http://www.seg.org/SEGportalWEBproject/prod/SEG-Publications/Pub-Technical-Standards/Documents/seg_se_metric_1980.pdf


Their metrication may have stalled out, as it is still listed on their website 
as the current edition.  They describe it as very similar to and derived from a 
standard by the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE). SPE updated theirs 
slightly in 1982, but they also seem to have stalled out.  They accept papers 
in 
either Customary or metric, with conversion factors at the end of article (no 
dual in text).
Note:  I couldn't get the pdf version of SPE standard to download, the Google 
cache html version was a bit garbled.

Part 1 is a rehash of other SI standards of the era, slightly out-of-date and 
probably not worth reading.  Part 2 and particularly Table 2.2 are interesting 
as a discussion of unit recommendations particularly relevant to their 
industry.  The SAE Metric Standard, TSB003, uses a similar organization and 
table, but some recommendations differ.  There are a few oddities: liters may 
only be used to 100 L, then you must switch to cubic meters, for larger 
volumes, 
they recommend hectare-meters.

Their statements on old units "disappearing" seem so firm, it would be 
interesting to know why their metrication died out (I suspect API).