On Sun, 9 Mar 2003, Terry Simpson wrote: > >Of Gene Mechtly > >Are you sufficiently interested to ask legal authorities in the Department > >of Commerce? (I note that Karen Brown is only the "Acting Director" of > >NIST as stated in the 2002 Edition of HB 44.) > > Possibly, but I cannot give her much of a reason for wanting to know. Why > should she be interested in hearing from me?
Terry, I had in mind legal professionals in the DoC, excluding Ms. Brown. As a consultant to businesses on matters of international standards, commerce and trade, you already have good reason to expect attorneys in the DoC to answer your questions on legal definitions of non-metric units still used in trade with the US. > As with the SI brochure, I think that some of these documents could be > written better. I agree with your suggestions in even more restrictive form as below: > 1. ... Define all non-metric units in terms of SI units: > > 2. ... Phase out intermediate definitions except in historical records. i.e. keep 1 inch = 0.0254 m but delete the following three 1 foot = 12 inch, 1 yard = 3 feet and 1 mile = 1760 yard, and add 1 foot = ... m, 1 yard = ... m, and 1 mile = ... m (for each kind of mile) and each expressed as an exact multiple. > 3. Keep the first (already defined above) but delete the other three. > > 1 inch = 0.0254 m > 1 foot = 12 inch > 1 yard = 36 inch > 1 mile = 63360 inch > 4. ... keep the legal document simple by eliminating inverted definitions. Agreed. > Similarly, I think that documents like the FPLA should not > (a) provide yet source of conversion factors, as in "1 inch = 2.54 cm" > and (b) should not try to embed conversions of working values within the > body of text as in "Not less than 1/4 inch (6.35 mm) in height" > They should simply state the value in one system and be done with it (all > Federal legal instruments should be in metric units anyway). Agreed! The FPLA should reference of photocopy the relevant sections of the NIST set of exact definitions of non-metric units, and eventually discard the non-metric units entirely. Gene.
