On Fri, 7 Mar 2003, Terry Simpson wrote: > My interest in it is to be able to find a root source of information. > ... > I simply wanted a single US legal source for the basic non-metric > definitions...
Terry, "Units of Weight and Measure (United States Customary and Metric) Definitions and Tables of Equivalents, US Department of Commerce, National Bureau of Standards, Miscellaneous Publication 233, issued December 20, 1960" by the US Government Printing Office, might be the official root source you seek. The author was L. V. Judson. At that time, MP 233 was for sale by the US GPO for $0.40. The motivation for MP 233, stated in the Introduction, was: "Refinements in the definition of US customary units of length and mass that became effective July 1, 1959 made it desirable to prepare a new publication giving these revised definitions and the revised tables of equivalents based on them. MP 233 does use the revised exact definitions: 1 inch = 0.0254 meter; 1 avoirdupois pound = 0.453 592 37 kilogram; and all the revised definitions that are derived from these numbers. Please let us know if you are able to obtain a copy of MP 233 from the archives of the US Government Printing Office. Gene.
