At 11:32 +0100 01/03/9, Han Maenen wrote:
>(Re: USMA 11514 by me and 11515 by Louis)
>
>John, Louis and all,
>
>I got this stuff from their Yardstick about the trash-ditional units
>supposed to be used in France:
>
>http://members.aol.com/footrule/ystwob.htm
>
>The Yardstick, Number 2 (April 1996) -- Part B
>
>TRADITIONAL MEASURES ABROAD
>France
>Here is a partial list of non-metric measures still used in France, sent to
>us by Alan Harrison, to whom many thanks.
>
>Knot (noeud) for speed of boats
Yes
>, planes
km/h is more and more used
> and wind
never ; always km/h
>Nautical mile (mille marin)
yes
>Nautical league (lieue marine), i.e. 3 nautical miles
never
>Hand (paume) for the height of a horse
>** Is it 7.5 or 10 cm, by chance?
never heard, but I am not fond of horse races...
>Carat (carat)
>**This is the metric carat.
yes - only for jewelry
>***The standard railway gauge is still referred to in feet and inches by
>railway engineers,
never
>** The French use centimeters more than they use millimeters, but I have
>usually seen this gauge expressed as 1435 mm. Engineers use the
>millimeter anyway.
lay people usually say "1 meter 435"
>Degree of angle. Grades exist (1 right angle = 100 grades) but they are used
>much less frequently than degrees.
right
>League (lieue). The newspaper "La Charente Libre" on Friday 22.2.96
>described a village as being less than two leagues from the nearest town:
>"Le village d'Antezant-la-Chapelle est ... moins de deux lieues de St. Jean
>d'Angély."
"lieue" is sometimes used by writers, to give a feeling of
ancient time. Nobody actually knows the value of a "lieue"
>Handmade leather gloves. The leather is measured for cutting out, using a
>foot ruler marked in inches, at a factory near Limoges (quoted on TV channel
>3 on Saturday, 24 February).
>** In this case they are right. The leather trade uses feet and inches.
not totally right. I know this factory near Limoges (in fact
these factories, in Saint Junien, a small city some 40 km south of
Limoges, which produce about 40 % of the world production of handmade
gloves - this is the cradle of my wife's family). Right, some
"traditional" gloves, replicas of gloves made in 17/18th century, are
made using rules marked with "pouces". All other gloves are based on
forms measured in millimeters.
It is also right that glove sizes use a strange systems (my
wife always orders the "7 1/2" size). It could well be linked to
"pouces". I will try to get more information.
Louis
