I wondered too...
>From my first surveying book "Elementary Surveying", Sixth Edition by
Russell C. Brinker and Raul R. Wolf. (c) 1977 Harper & Row
"The foot originally adopted in the US was based on 39.37 inches being equal
exactly to 1 meter, and thus 1 foot equal to 0.3048006 m. In 1959, however,
the US officially adopted the inch as equal to eaxactly 2.54 cm, so under
this standard 1 ft equals 0.3048000 m. This difference amounts to ine part
in 500,000, or 1 ft in 99.6969.... miles. Since all surveying done prior to
1959 was done on the original standard, it would have been confusing to
change. Therefore the original basis, now called the US Survey foot, has
been officially adoptred for surveying."
The International Foot is the 1959 standard.
Alex Machinis
EMPOWER GEOGRAPHICS, INC.
1000 Executive Way
Des Plaines, Illinois 60018-1502
847/299-6952 x212 Fax: 847/299-6990
http://www.empowergeo.com
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Note: this message and any attachments have been scanned and checked for
viruses. You may want to perform checks with your own anti-viral
software.
-----Original Message-----
From: Uhl, Philip/SLC [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, December 22, 1998 05:28 PM
To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
Subject: MI PRO: Feet vs. U.S. Survey Feet
Hi,
Under Map-->Options-->Distance Units you can choose between "feet" or "U.S.
survey feet." I have yet to find a human or website that can tell me the
difference between the two. For that matter, what's the difference between
"feet" and "international feet?"
Thanks,
Phil Uhl
----------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this list, send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put
"unsubscribe MAPINFO-L" in the message body, or contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this list, send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put
"unsubscribe MAPINFO-L" in the message body, or contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
