Webster's has it online:
http://www.webster.com/home.htm
Baron Carter
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, 24 April, 2001 14:26
To: U.S. Metric Association
Subject: [USMA:12423] Re: NASA and weight vs. mass
Karl G. Ruling wrote in USMA 12422:
>You're right, of course. I suspect that NASA used weight rather than mass
>when writing in FFU about the mechanical arm in space because the unit of
>mass in the foot-pound system is the slug.
Wrong. The pound is defined in legislation as the unit of mass. Engineers
have habitually used it as a unit of weight, and when that got the
aeronautical engineers into trouble, they invented the slug which has no
legal sanction behind it. The slug as a unit of mass does not appear in
the 1970 edition of the Shorter Oxford Dictionary of the English Language,
Physicists, with a better understanding of Newton, retained the pound as a
unit of mass, and invented the poundal as the corresponding unit of force.
The Oxford dictioary dates the poundal from 1879.
Joseph B. Reid
17 Glebe Road West
Toronto M5P 1C8 Tel. 416 486-6071
