Tony Firshman wrote: > On Sat, 14 Jan 2006 at 17:29:28, Phoebus R. Dokos wrote: > (ref: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>) > > >><snip> >> >>>I do personally too. >>>All our timber merchants still sell imperial sizes, but display them >>>metric - which is bizarre. >>> >>> >>So they sell Two by Fours but say: 60.8cm x 121.60cm ? >> > Exactly, but they use mm. > The figures, being so large and strange, are incomprehensible. > As you say, we simply ask for it in imperial and they sell and label in > metric.
According to my [US: Collins] encylopedia, in 1959 the yard was redefined to be EXACTLY 0.9144m, and the pound as redefined to be EXACTLY 0.45359237Kg, effective July 1, 1959. So asking in imperial is actually asking in metric! (The "inch" is the name for a distance of 0.0254m.) ^_^ ... > ... and we will _never lose our 568 ml beer glasses. > I got stuck there finding the value, as the web sites I found were > dominated by US, so plenty of conversions of pint to cup. Now that is a > _really_ stupid measure! > .... and _why_ is the US gallon 80% of the imperial gallon? Probably because their pint = 16FlOz to match 1lb = 16Oz, whereas the imperial pint = 20flOz. And that could be due to a pint of water (at stp, I presume) weighing 1lb exactly in one of the systems (which I'm not sure now). _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
