Renaud (Ron) OLGIATI wrote:
On Monday 23 April 2007 11:22, my mailbox was graced by a missive
from NoOp <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> who wrote:
http://ts.nist.gov/WeightsAndMeasures/Publications/appxc.cfm
Thanks for the link, I had not realized up to now how f...ed up the
US-Imperial system was.
I noted the US has 5 different "barrels" of varying capacities,
Actually, there are even more. I tried to list them all several years
ago, and finally gave up.
The actual cause of the difference is that units were anciently set up
by city authorities. (The Troy Pound, for example, was established by
and named for the city of Troyes, France, where there was a big medieval
gold market.) The new US chose one of the several systems then in use in
England. Later, when the Imperial System was set up in 1824 -- one of
the reasons being to get rid of city-to-city differences -- the UK
authorities chose another.
that the
gallon, the cup, the fluis ounce, the pint, the quart, the fathom or the
cable length all refer to different quantities in the US and the UK; not to
mention calling units "international" when they are only legal in the US,
Burma and Liberia; bit like the World Series......
They were named "International" in 1959 when the US and Imperial Inch
and the US and Imperial Pound were rationalized. (Except for the US
Survey Inch, which retains the old value of exactly 1/39.37 meter, as
opposed to the new International Inch of exactly 0.0254 meter, because
US mapmakers didn't want to change.) They are still called
"International" because new names would only add to the confusion.
--
John W. Kennedy
"...when you're trying to build a house of cards, the last thing you
should do is blow hard and wave your hands like a madman."
-- Rupert Goodwins
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