Krishna Kambhampat wrote in USMA 12552: >Bon jour. I don't have current knowledge but I used to live there. We >predominantly used metric measures for official or semi-official purposes. >In engineering school, given my age, we used CGS giving way to MKSA and >eventually SI. Colloquial use of "miles", "feet", "yards" and "acres" are >fairly common, though most people have the metric equivalents in mind. It >appears that many people use meters and yards almost interchangeably. >There are also many indigenous units like "bhiga" (areal) etc. I lived in Delhi in 1952 t0 1954. I remember that the bhiga was ambiguous. The southern bhiga was bigger than the northern bhiga. I remember a misunderstanding with a street vendor who was selling fruit by the pau (about 250 g) which I understood as pound. On the other hand, the machine shop of the National Physical Labortory where I worked did an excellent job in making several pieces of equipment from my metric sketches. Joseph B. Reid 17 Glebe Road West Toronto M5P 1C8 Tel. 416 486-6071
