Dear All,
on 2003-10-27 10.05, Mighty Chimp at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
What is FFU?
It seems that it is time to repost my summary on this matter. For those who
have seen this before, please note that it has been updated slightly.
**
WOMBAT
Paul Trusten, a pharmacist in Massachusetts originally devised the acronym
WOMBAT.
It stands for �Ways Of Measuring Badly in America Today �or� Waste Of Money,
Brains, And Time.
The second expansion of the acronym accurately describes all non-SI units,
and the first accurately describes all those used in the USA.
WOMBAT has the advantages that it is a single word; and it is an acronym so
it doesn't need to have a specific meaning.
After Paul Trusten introduced WOMBAT to the United States Metric Association
it quickly became very popular because it is short, humorous, sarcastic, and
implies that the old units are structurally as primitive as Australian
marsupial mammals.
Another advantage of the acronym WOMBAT is that it is all-inclusive. You can
use it for all the old non-SI units, for the old Imperial units and even for
old metric but non-SI units such as calories and kilocalories.
However, there is no such thing as a 'WOMBAT system' - it is just WOMBAT.
With a little license, I have also used the acronym 'WOMBAT' for: 'Ways Of
Measuring Badly in Australia Today.'
The acronym, WOMBAT, is useful because there is a fundamental difficulty in
discussing the old non-SI units that are still used in some parts of the
world because there is no official, collective name for the old units we
used in the past.
To help organise my thoughts about old units I have made a list of other
expressions that are used to describe old units. They are:
American units
The term, American units, is wrong because it is not synonymous with the old
units. That assumption is patently false, since the USA has based the
definitions of all their old units on metric units since 1893. This was when
the USA Congress adopted the metre as a standard and defined the inch, foot,
yard, and pound in relation to the metre and kilogram. 'American units'
really means metric units or, more specifically, units of the International
System or SI units.
Mongrel units
Mongrel units are those that are neither fish nor fowl. These are composite
units made up from parts of various methods without definable parentage.
Examples are grams per mile, pounds per tonne, watts per square inch, ounces
per square metre, and micrograms per square foot. Some mongrel units can be
quite hard to detect. An old practice, based on the misunderstanding of the
difference between a pound of mass and a pound of weight, is sometimes
reintroduced into metric systems and a kilogram is used in place of the
correct unit, a newton. Mongrel units are the worst kind of units and should
be avoided at all times.
British colonial units
British Colonial has several advantages. It makes a useful distinction
between British Colonial (pre 1824) from British Imperial units (post 1824).
It is reasonably technically correct and it makes it clear where these units
originated.
However, having said all of this, British colonial units is neither accurate
nor inclusive; the British colonies used Imperial units � not colonial units
and not the USA Customary units that shared the same names.
Colonial units
Colonial units immediately identifies old units and sets them in a political
context as being left-over remnants from the time of colonialism without too
much of a political axe to grind against England or the United States.
Customary units
Customary units is wrong because most of them are no longer customary
anywhere in the world, and they will become less customary in the future.
USA customary units (USCU) are really S1 units in disguise. USCU can not
survive without SI and needs it absolutely in order to be applicable for
high technology work. This is a misuse of SI standards to prop up a
competing set of units. If barley corns, human hands and feet, and the
length of our arms were good enough for high precision measurements then
United States Customary units would not have to be propped up by SI
standards.
Colloquial units
Colloquial units is another way of saying 'Customary units' and it has the
same problems. The term 'Colloquial units' should not be used in formal
writing, but it might be useful when referring to the way people speak as
the meaning of colloquial refers to the way we speak.
Decimal units
Clearly, the modern metric system, the International System of Units (SI),
is a decimal system with the idea of decimal numbers as its heart. However,
it is not so well known that since the success of the metric system, from
1792, many attempts were made to decimalise bits and pieces of many old
measuring methods. One of the earliest examples was Gunter's chain where
Gunter divided the English chain (80 to the mile) into 100 links. Although
this divided the chain into 100 lots of (the uncomfortable number) 7.92
inches, the advantages of a decimal number for calculation were so apparent
that Gunter's chain was a major hit with the surveying community especially
in the USA. Other examples of retrofitting decimal ideas to old units are
mils (milli-inches), thous (thousandths of inches), and kiloyards (one
thousand yards).
Deprecated units
Deprecated units is correct for a small group of units that have been
deprecated by the world authority that controls the International System of
Units � Conf�rence G�n�rale de Poids et Mesures (CGPM). However, most people
do not know what deprecated means, they�ve never heard of the CGPM, and some
non-SI units have not yet been officially deprecated by CGPM.
Emu
Emu meaning English mixture of units has the same problems as English units
and Ye Olde English Mixture of units. Emu should not be confused with emu,
which stands for electromagnetic units (see below).
English units
English is neither accurate nor inclusive, and it is ambiguous as most
non-SI units are not of English origin. The majority of so-called English
units were originally developed by the Romans, Babylonians, medieval
Europeans, various industries, businesses, and sometimes individual
scientists and engineers. English units also confuses true English units
(whatever they are) with Imperial units and USA units with the same name;
for example an English ounce or a ton is not the same as an ounce or a ton
in the USA.
FFU
FFU is an abbreviation of the words 'Fred Flintstone Units' and it was
clearly designed as a derogatory term to mock old units when they are
compared to the International System of Units. FFU was not meant as an
alternative name for USA Customary units or for British Imperial units; it
was meant as a catch-all phrase for all non-SI units, even old Chinese
units. Generally however, FFU is taken to mean the combined hodge-podge of
USA Customary units and British Imperial units because they are the only
remaining measuring units still left that are seeking international
acceptance.
Imperial units
Leaving aside the question of the demise of the Roman empire, Imperial units
is neither accurate nor inclusive. It is a long time since there's been any
empire that was able to set standards of measurement for the whole world or
even for portions of it. Imperial units is even less appropriate for use in
connection with units with old style names in the USA; Imperial units were
never used in the USA as the Imperial units of the British Empire were
developed, in England, after the USA became an independent nation.
Inch-ounce (IO) units
IO, for inch-ounce units, describes the historical origins of both of these
units of length and weight (mass) as a corrupted form of the Roman word for
one twelfth. One twelfth (unciae) of a foot eventually came to us as an
inch, and one twelfth (unciae) of a pound (libra
or lb.) eventually came to us as an ounce. As you can see both inch and
ounce initially meant a fraction of one twelfth.
IP, fp, or ifp
IP for inch-pound units, fp for foot-pound, or ifp for inch-foot-pound are
neither accurate nor inclusive. These names are sometimes appropriate in an
engineering context but they are of less use in other fields. They are also
unsatisfactory on other grounds, since many old units, such as the gallon or
acre, have little to do with either inches, feet, or pounds. Also, although
many non-SI units are related to the pound they are not necessarily related
to the inch. In legal terms the old measures were more likely to be based on
the foot or the yard rather than the inch. These terms also have the
drawback that they do not include any of the obsolete metric units.
Non-SI
Non-SI is accurate and inclusive but many people don't yet know what SI
means. Besides non-SI is clumsy to say and it is too similar to SI.
NSIU
NSIU for non-SI units is technically correct but seems vague; it sounds more
like the abbreviation of the name of a university.
Old metric systems
It took about 170 years (1790 to 1960) for the first metric system to evolve
into the 'International System of Units � the modern metric system. During
that time, the metric system took several forms, and these can, in
hindsight, be thought of as evolutionary stages, as each of these metric
systems were improvements on previous metric systems.
The original metric system was devised, by an international committee,
during the 1790s. The first major suggestion for improvement came from Karl
Frederick Gauss who proposed that new electric units should be based on the
millimetre, the milligram and the second in 1832.
In 1873, the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) also
realised that new units were needed to measure electrical properties. They
proposed new electrical units based on the centimetre, the gram and the
second. Historically, this became the cgs system (and sometimes the CGS
system) when the first Congr�s International d'Electricit� formally adopted
this system in 1881.
By the end of the eighteenth century, divisions had developed between
scientists and engineers. Scientists, such as chemists, were quite
comfortable using centimetres and grams, but the engineers wanted to use
much larger units such as kilograms or tonnes. One particular area of
difference involved electromagnetic units (emu), based on the cgs system,
which were opposed to the electrostatic units, also based on the cgs system,
and both of these were opposed to the international electrical units that
are based on the mks system.
Giovanni Giorgi, an Italian engineer, proposed a compromise in 1901.
Giorgi's system was based on the metre, the kilogram and the second and he
suggested that an electrical unit would need to be chosen to construct a
fully coherent system of units. In the meantime, engineers in France were
using � and lobbied for appropriate laws � a system based on the metre, the
tonne, and the second (mts or MTS). The mts system could be used legally in
France between 1919 to 1961. Engineers, all around the world, also devised
another metric system based on the metre, the kilogram (of force not mass),
and the second. From these competing systems, the Giorgi system was adopted
by the Commission Electrotechnique Internationale, in 1935.
Subsequently, in 1948, The Giorgi system was also adopted by the Conf�rence
G�n�rale des Poids et Mesure (CGPM) and the amp�re was selected in 1950 as
the electrical unit. This system was known as the mksA system.
Considerable work followed to further develop the mksA system until 1960,
when, with the addition of several other new units, the modern metric system
was named the 'Syst�me International d'Unit�s' or, in English, the
'International System of Units'. The modern metric system is officially
designated, and it is known in all nations, and in all languages, by its
French initials, 'SI'.
Old English (and USA) scientific and engineering 'systems'
While the metric system was evolving into the 'International System of
Units', many efforts were made to try to retrofit properties of the metric
system on to older measuring methods.
Several things should be noted about these old modified methods.
Firstly, it is not correct to say that these old modified methods were
'systems', even though they are often called by that name. They are not
'systems' mostly because they are not complete methods of measures. For
example, while mechanical engineers were devising their own 'system' they
gave little thought to any issues faced by aeronautical or civil engineers.
As a result, in any 'Gravitational System', there are aeronautical
engineering, civil engineering, and mechanical engineering versions, and
each of these has a distinct variety for the UK and another for the USA. And
none of these 'systems' has anything to say about chemistry, medicine,
nutrition, or any other of the remaining thousands of human activities.
Secondly, these methods are unsupported by any international (or national)
organisation, so there is very little information about what these old
'systems' actually are. These 'systems' are not documented, so it is quite
difficult to find details about these old measuring methods. This can be a
real problem if you are trying to cite a 'standard' that was used for a
particular set of measures � often no such 'standard' exists. If there is no
standard document that you can use as a reference to define the system � and
the way it was used � then you can only vaguely say that they used
'inch-pound units' or they used 'foot-pound units'. You might find some
documentation for the Absolute Units and for Engineering Units, although
this can often be contradictory. For example, British Absolute Units, used
mostly by physicists, had the pound as a unit of mass and the poundal as a
unit of force, while British (and USA) Gravitational Units, used by
engineers, employed a pound for force and a pound for mass. Naturally, the
scientists and the engineers used different length units for their work.
Even in engineering, aeronautical engineers used the pound for force and the
slug for mass while mechanical engineers a pound for force and a pound for
mass. When civil engineers used a foot as their unit of length, mechanical
engineers used an inch as their unit of length. Over time, the different
measuring methods became many measuring 'systems'.
Thirdly, leaving aside the question of how you measure something as basic as
length (you could choose to use international, nautical, statute, or survey
methods), there is also the question of which length units you will use
(thous, inches, links, feet, yards, rods, poles, perches, chains, miles, or
leagues) when you decide on a measuring 'system'. There is no 'system'
between these odd, historically generated, units.
Fourthly, they are also not 'systems' because no attempt was ever made to
form them into coherent measuring methods like the coherence of the metric
systems. Overall, it is best never to use the word 'system' with old units.
If you are examining an old measuring method where the inch and the pound
are the dominant units, then say that it uses inch-pound units and ignore
the other units in the set. If you are examining historical documents where
the foot and the pound are the dominant units, then say that it uses
foot-pound units and ignore the others.
Names of old measuring methods that you might find include: Apothecaries
Units, Avoirdupois Units, British Absolute Units, British Engineering Units,
British Gravitational Units, English Engineering Units, Foot-Pound Units,
Foot-Pound-Second Units, Imperial Units, Inch-Pound Units, Inch-Pound-Second
Units, Troy Units, and USA Customary Units. Don't forget that many of these
sets of units might appear in UK and USA versions of aeronautical, civil,
and mechanical engineering, as well as in surveying 'systems'.
Olde English Mixture of units
Olde English Mixture of units has the same problems as English units. It is
also confusing because many non-SI units are recent inventions; they're not
old. For example, the inch, the foot, and the yard did not have standard
lengths until 1959; and even then they were only standardised for English
speaking nations. The pouce, or French inch, still has no definition.
PSIU
PSIU for pre-SI units has the same problems as NSIU.
Standard units
Standard units, sometimes written as Std. and sometimes as USS for US
Standard, is not appropriate, as it is not accurate. There is only one truly
international system of standard units, and that is the International System
of Units (SI). SI is the world standard in all countries in the world, and
this has been true since the late nineteenth century. Even in the USA � the
last country in the world to change to SI � the metre and the kilogram have
been their only legal standards since 1893.
System
System as in 'English system', 'Imperial system' or �USA system� is totally
wrong because there never was a complete system, just part systems or random
mixtures of units. These terms should be avoided since most of the old units
are unrelated and certainly do not constitute any sort of coherent 'system.'
Unacceptable units
Unacceptable units is too vague, but it may be useful in some circumstances,
especially since it is technically accurate. At its simplest, if the units
are not SI they are not acceptable.
USC or US Customary
USC for US Customary is not accurate or inclusive; for example it excludes
Imperial units. Many SI units are also customary. Most citizens of the USA
would recognise the SI units, second, litre, watt, volt, ampere, and hertz,
and regard them as customary units in the USA.
Ye olde imperial colonial English incoherent mix of non-system WOMBAT units
Ye olde imperial colonial english incoherent mix of non-system WOMBAT units
is probably a bit long.
And what about: historical units (or hysterical units), (or prehistoric
units), ancient units, archaic units, Fred Flintstone units (FFUs), old
units, incoherent units, old fashioned units, bad units, unsystematic units,
old traditional units, old customary units, old standard units, or formerly
traditional units, formerly customary units, formerly standard units, etc,
etc, etc.
An interesting question that arises when you consider these issues is 'What
is (or was) the legal standard for old units? Of all of the old measurement
units, which of them is the fundamental unit, and what is its official
definition? What official standards exist (or have ever existed) for old
measures? I wish you well if you have any international agreements that
calls for (say) 'inch-pound' units. Leaving aside the discussions between
scientists and engineers, you might also be on shaky legal ground. There is
often no written standards or legal definitions of any of these 'systems'
that would be accepted by a court.
In my formal writing, I will continue to use 'non-SI,' or 'unacceptable
units' but I suspect that from time to time the word colonial or the acronym
WOMBAT will creep into my vocabulary.
In the light of these not-so-good choices, it's not surprising that in the
USA, as that nation changes to SI, many of their citizens have taken to
using the acronym WOMBAT to describe all of the old ways of our enormous,
chaotic, collection of non-SI units.
In fact, if you include this acronym, WOMBAT, in your SI conversations, it
may be one of the most constructive things you can do to help people to move
toward adopting SI units exclusively.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
LCAMS - Lifetime Certified Advanced Metrication Specialist
- United States Metric Association
ASM - Accredited Speaking Member
- National Speakers Association of Australia
Member, International Federation for Professional Speakers
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