To USMA list and officers: Just took a United Airlines flight on one leg of a recent business trip and was surprised to see that the cover of United Airlines' Hemispheres magazine for February 2003 has an image consisting of sections of centimeter tape measures interwoven into a pattern. You can be assured they are centimeters by the 10 subdivisions between each number. Inches would be divided into quarters, not tenths.
Inside the magazine is a one-page article about the artist whose work is featured on the cover. The article has a very short history of the measurements and the metric system. For a view of the magazine cover and article see: http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/home.htm The cover will appear first. To see the article about the cover, click on "Cover Artist Profile" at the bottom of the page. In case some of you are not familiar with United Airlines use of metric, their magazine uses dual units throughout, even 24 h time in addition to AM/PM on their world map near the back of the magazine. The in-flight navigation map, viewed via the back-of-the-seat monitors on the Boeing 777, uses dual units for everything, such as the plane's altitude, outside temperature, and numerous other parameters such as plane speed and wind speed. Don Hillger
