See: http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/dykt.htm#inch
-----Original Message----- From: Markus Kuhn [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, 2002 July 31 09:00 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:21452] Re: Inch Jim McCracken wrote on 2002-07-31 13:45 UTC: > The inch was not set at 25.4 millimeters centuries ago, but in the > 1950s. Was setting the inch to 25.6 mm or 25.0 mm seriously discussed as an option at this or at any earlier opportunity? Is the rationale for the choice of 25.4 mm for the inch documented somewhere in more details, as well as the history of previous definitions for the inch? When was the inch defined in the US for the first time with an accuracy of better then 0.1 mm? the practice of length measurement with a relative error below 1% surely must predate the 1950s significantly ... even centuries ... Markus -- Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK Email: mkuhn at acm.org, WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>
