From: "Brij Bhushan Vij" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [USMA:24219] Fwd: Delivery Status Notification (Failure) Date: Wed, 25 Dec 2002 01:07:19 +0000From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Failure) Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2002 17:03:58 -0800 This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification. Delivery to the following recipients failed. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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--- Begin Message --- Pat and all:
The reason 'yard and foot' have survived for so long was for TWO reasons: (1) there was NO alternative to foot, like the *decimetre* and (2) mere conversion and NO 'rationalisation' in day-to-day work got the better over 'centimetre and metre'.
The measurements were NEVER brought to the common folk!
Brij B. Vij<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: Pat Naughtin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [USMA:24216] Millimetres, centimetres, and decimetres
Date: Wed, 25 Dec 2002 10:47:26 +1100
on 2002-12-22 03.09, Han Maenen at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
<snip>
> The decimeter may be used here and there in Europe but that is very
> sporadic. The centimeter is the 'inch-like' unit here in the timber and
> other trades. It was officially called the 'Dutch inch' when we went metric
> in 1820, then slowly its proper name took over. I would also strongly advise
> against doing away with the cemtimeter. Just use it or the millimeter at
> your convenience.
<snip>
I agree with you about the decimetre. To my knowledge, it was rarely used in
metric conversions in Australia. For a brief moment, the leather industry
played with the idea of using square decimetres to describe fresh and tanned
skins, However, the industry leaders soon realised that workers on the
tanning floor could not handle the sophisticated mathematics involved in
measuring skin thickness in millimetres and skin lengths and widths is
decimetres, so they then decided to do all length measures in millimetres
and all area measures in square metres � and this seems to be working fine.
On the second issue regarding millimetres vs centimetres, I have to disagree
with you, not for reasons to do with the theory of metrology, not for the
idea that one of these is superior or inferior to the other, but simply
because it is my experience that the conversion to metric measures is much
smoother and much quicker if millimetres are used.
I respect your view that the "centimeter is the 'inch-like' unit here in the
timber and other trades", but I am also confident that that became the
situation after a long period of transition from the old Dutch units to
modern metric measures � my guess would be about fifty years.
The Australian experience is that metric transition can be done in less than
a year � if you use millimetres � and in about fifty years � if you use
centimetres.
Nations such as the Nederlands (the first nation in the world to adopt
metric units legally) have had enough time for the slow transition to have
happened. Other nations, such as Brasil, have also had the luxury of this
amount of time. Even France took fifty years before the metric process had
enough momentum to be inevitable � I think they used centimetres.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin LCAMS
Geelong, Australia
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