It was a JOKE!!! And, in fact, pi IS a definition: the ratio of the circumferance to the diameter of a circle - whether it's measured in cubits, furlongs, nanometers, or light years.
-John ============== > Your "pi" example does not work. Pi is not a definition. the length of > an inch has changed many times over the centuries so there have been many > definitions. So yes 2.54 mm is the current definition but there are > others > and you only have to go mack to 1958 to find that another definition of > the > inch was used. > > Yes the length of the inch actally changed. So in theory any ruller or > machine tools or micrometer made in work war II era has been wrong for a > long time. But fortunately the change was tiny at the 1/10,000th level > > The lllength of the inch, foot, yard and so on all changed a little over > 50 > years ago so that we could have exact and easy conversions to and from the > rest of the world's units. > > > On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 10:52 AM, J. Forster <[email protected]> wrote: > >> No. It's THE definition... there is only one. >> >> It's not like Pi, which equals 3 for small circles. >> >> -John >> >> =============== >> >> >> >> > In message >> > <caf_se-av85uzwvkp2zeil10dcdeohroj0wne1d-13vawcwt...@mail.gmail.com> >> > , Robert Darlington writes: >> > >> >>Machinists know that 1 inch is exactly 2.54cm or 25.4mm. It's a >> >>definition, not a coincidence. >> > >> > The crucial word in that statement being "a" :-) >> > >> > -- >> > Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 >> > [email protected] | TCP/IP since RFC 956 >> > FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe >> > Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by >> > incompetence. >> > _______________________________________________ >> > time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] >> > To unsubscribe, go to >> > https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts >> > and follow the instructions there. >> > >> > >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] >> To unsubscribe, go to >> https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts >> and follow the instructions there. >> > > > > -- > > Chris Albertson > Redondo Beach, California > _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
