At 16:05 -0700 01/03/25, Dennis Brownridge wrote:
>I have often lamented that the founders of the metric
>system didn't make the base unit about a decimeter long instead of a meter,
>and while they were at it, give it a one-syllable name, like "met."
"mètre" is pronounced (in French) as a one-syllabe name. Had the
founders of the metric system to worry about the translation of the
original names in all languages in the world, possibly they would
have given up !
>If they
>had also retained the original mass unit (grave = 1 kg), instead of
>switching to the thousand-times-smaller gram,
For most people, the base unit of mass (or weight !) is the
"kilogramme". The fact that officially it is its thousandth part does
not matter to them.
>and the original decimal time
>units,
if the decimal time had been so appealing to people, why did it not
survive more 7 months (from 22 September 1794 to 7 April 1795) ?
>most of our metrication difficulties would be solved. It is ironic
>that the principal defects of SI are the metric base units.
May I disagree ? The metrication difficulties you experience do not
stem from the "deficiencies" of SI. This is a bad excuse.
Louis
