Letters Editor, The Times, London Sir: I have been following with interest the recent exchange of letters in your paper regarding Britain's metrication. Mr. Gregory's recent letter invites a response, which I hope to provide. Yes, the United States was undoubtedly included in the statistics provided earlier by Mr. Keenan. The U.S. is the only industrial nation that is not officially metricated and its population is nearly 4 % of the world's population. The next largest non-metric country is a fifth the size of the U.S. However, the U.S. is about 40 % metricated despite its official standing. Roughly half of all highway construction and all federal building is now done metrically. Most Americans live in states that permit metric-only labeled goods, except where prohibited by federal law, which in turn is expected to change soon to also allow metric-only labeling. We are but several years behind Britain on this. The issue of organ pipe sizes is no more than a semantic dodge. Those pipe rank sizes were named before the modern foot was defined. Back then, the more common tuning was A=415 Hz (roughly) versus today's A=440 Hz. Also, the exact length of a pipe is a function of its diameter as well as its pitch. I doubt that there are any organ pipes in the world with lengths of exactly 16', 8', 4', 2', etc. except by accident. No organs were ever rebuilt because the size of the foot was changed, which used to be a not uncommon event. By the way, Mr. Gregory, an uncapped 8' pipe does not speak at middle C, but roughly two octaves below and close to C# on today's scale. Lastly, I fail to see the current size of bearings in the mentioned industries as being a large impediment. I'm sure that British engineers are quite up to the challenge of dealing with that alleged problem. regarcds, James R. Frysinger -- James R. Frysinger University/College of Charleston 10 Captiva Row Dept. of Physics and Astronomy Charleston, SC 29407 66 George Street 843.225.0805 Charleston, SC 29424 http://www.cofc.edu/~frysingj [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cert. Adv. Metrication Specialist 843.953.7644
