Ma Be wrote is USMA 19846
>On Wed, 1 May 2002 18:54:55
> Joseph B. Reid wrote:
>...
>>The British yard was measured against the metre and it was found that
>> 1 imperial yard = 0.914 399 metre
>> or 1 imperial inch = 25.399.972 mm
Reference Encyclopaedia Britannica, eleventh edition
>>The US yard was defined by the relation
>> 1 US yard = 3600/3925 meter
>>or 1 US inch = 25.400 050 8 mm
Reference Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, 22nd Edition, 1937 ("the
rubber book").
>That's the "crux of the question", Joe. I need an official reference to
>the above effect, i.e. a document that contains the above wording.
>>...
>>I agree that the metric prefixes are conversion factors but they have the
>>special names of decimal multiples and submultiples.
>>
>And I have to vehemently disagree! Prefixes are attached to *mathematical
>entities*, powers of 10(!), NOT units. That's how they're defined in BIPM
>and other official books. Therefore, how can they be even called
>"conversion factors"???
I should have expressed my self more fully. The decimal multiples of
metric base units have conversion factors of 10^x from those base units.
The decimal submultiples of metric base units have conversion factors of
10^-x from those base units. In both cases x must be a positve integer.
>>It is true that each country has its own weights and measures law. I have
>>copies of the British and Canadian acts. They both define the imperial
>>units in terms of metric units. The United States has never been able to
>>legislate a weights and measures law, but metric units have been legal
>>since 1866, and the administration has defined conversion factors between
>>US customery measures and metric measures.
>>...
>And would you be so kind to relay to me the references, please? Much obliged.
>
>Marcus
British reference: "Weights and Measures &c. Act 1976" Her Majesty's
Stationery Office.
Canadian reference: "19-20 Elizabeth II, An Act respecting weights and
measure. Queen's Printer for Canada, 1971".
US reference: U.S. Metric Study Interim Report, NBS SP 345-10, A History of
the Metric Controversy in the United States, pages 98 and 99: "President
Harrison had received and certified, on January 2, 1890, a set of prototype
metric standards as a result of our ratification of the 1875 Treaty of the
Meter. On April 5, 1893, Dr. Mendenhall...issued a bulletin declaring these
prototypes to be the "fundamental" U.S. standards of length and mass. It is
important to note that this was purely an administrative act."
The same report, on page 34, said "This Act was passed on May 19, 1828, and
the U.S. had, after 45 years of independent existence, finally adopted a
standard of weight for its coins. It had also passed the first, and only,
law of the United States officially adopting a standard of the customery
system of weights and measures."
Joseph B.Reid
17 Glebe Road West
Toronto M5P 1C8 Tel. 416 486-6071
