There are two 'metric' inches in fact. The international inch is one of them, 25.4 mm exactly at 20 degrees Celsius. Sometimes, 25 mm is also called a metric inch. I would not be surprised if the electronics industry, the corrupter of global measurement, uses the 25 mm 'inch' a lot, but fools everybody into believing that it is the US/Imperial one. Just like hard drive manufacturers who use the SI-meaning of prefixes like mega and giga for the capacity of hard disks and leave us to believe that these are binary megas and gigas. Expect them to fight the new binary prefixes tooth-and-nail! In some US states a so-called commercial acre, which is noticeably smaller than the statute one is recognized as a unit by the legislature. So, you may buy 1000 acres of land, then find out you got less, but have no way to fight it in the courts. It is in Rowlands Dictionary of Units under C - Commercial Acre.
Han Historian of Dutch Metrication, Nijmegen, The Netherlands ----- Original Message ----- From: "Pat Naughtin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, 2002-08-02 2:00 Subject: Re: [USMA:21476] Re: Inch > Dear Han, > > I like the idea of the metric inch. > > Next time I'm in a television or computer store and the attendant describes a screen as 21 inch, I will respectfully enquire whether they are international inches, survey inches, television inches (the short ones), or metric inches. The more confusion the better, say I. > > Cheers, > > Pat Naughtin CAMS > Geelong, Australia > > on 2002-08-02 04.10, Han Maenen at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > The BWMA knows, but does not care how Imperial units are standardized, but they are clever enough never to mention it on their website. They cannot afford to show how Imperial and USC are standardized and do not stand on their own feet. It was one of their answers to me that they did not care about the way the inch and other ifp units are being defined. > > The UKIP does not know anything about this issue anyway. To them metric = European = trash. Period. > > The inch has always been a fraction below or above 25.4 mm. They simply settled at choosing the value of 25.4 mm exactly for their 'metric' inch. They simply did not bother about choosing 25.6 mm and therefore provide more rational metric conversions. Maybe if they knew, they would block it anyway to prevent any easy access to metrication. > > <snip>
