The hand is used in equine circles. Didn't the Australians officially
change their definition of the hand from 4" to 100 mm (particularly in the
horse racing industry)? That would have made my old one-eyed mare about
13.5 hands (1.35 m) tall. She was a chunky gal, though, at a buxom 500 kg.
Jason
----- Original Message -----
From: Nat Hager III <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: U.S. Metric Association <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2001 3:57 PM
Subject: [USMA:11770] RE: Fw: Joan Pontius [Yahoo! Clubs: Metric America]
>
> > > Now I know you're all going to groan, but what we need is to
> > re-introduce
> > the measure called *the hand*. Granted, the hand is now 4 inches or
> > something,
>
> Actually there already is such a unit. It's called the 100 mm module, and
> it's darn handy! 300 mm is 3 "hands" stacked on top of one another, and
50
> mm is half a "hand". Some people also like to think in 25 mm modules,
> which they call an "inch", but that's just a quarter "hand". And when you
> get to fine work individual millimeters work well, and they're just a
> hundredth of a "hand".
>
> So long as you're comfortable using 100 mm as the base unit for "hand",
you
> never use fractions or decimals.
>
> Nat
>
>
