James Wentworth" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > That collection of columns is very revealing, because it shows the > "franco-phobic" attitude that seems to underlie much of the resistance to > metric among English-speaking people.
Curious, the kilogram, meter and Amp�re seem to be the only SI base units developed in France. Fahrenheit is an old German temperature scale, whereas the Celsius scale originated in Sweden. Perhaps NOAA should label the button for "English Units" on their web site that primarily selects Fahrenheit better "Ancient German Temperature Scale" versus "Modern Swedish Temperature Scale". It might also be worth pointing out occasionally that the Troy system of weights originated in France as well, and the name of the avoirdupois (from French "avoir du poids", goods of weight) doesn't sound too English to me either, which hardly makes the so-called "English" pound and ounce any less French than the kilogram, though most of the available historic literature on these systems seem to come from English sources. [http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/dictA.html#avoirdupois] To counter franco-phobic and nationalistic aversion against the international system, it might be worth to better document and publicise the full history of the so-called "English" units. Markus -- Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK Email: mkuhn at acm.org, WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>
