My guess is that the 1/6 and 1/12 inch divisions are useful for page layouts, figuring 72 picas per inch. If I recall, that makes a 12 point em equal to 1/6 of an inch.
I'm lost on the 5/32 inch divisions but two things come to mind. First, that's darned close to 4 mm! More likely though is that it would provide a leading allowance for 1/8 inch tall (9 point) type. Jim On Tuesday, 2004 January 13 00:52, Bill Potts wrote: > That's a very broad question, because there are so many kinds of rulers. > > I have a Canadian steel ruler from the early 1970s with two scales on each > of two sides. On one side, one edge is graduated in 5/32" units, with the > other edge in inches, subdivided into 1/6 and 1/12. The inches themselves > have two markings -- 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. and 6, 12, 18, 24, etc. > > On the other side, one edge has inches in 1/10, with each 1/10 individually > marked from 1 to 150. The other edge has inches with 1/4", 1/8", 1/16" and > 1/32" subdivisions. The inches themselves are marked 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. and > 150, 300, 450, 600, etc. > > The ruler has other features I won't mention yet. > > I want to see who can guess what kind of ruler it is, what some of the > numbers mean, and what the other features might be. One clue is that, in > spite of having no metric units whatever on it, it is still useful and the > units (and features) still have a valid purpose. > > Think "legacy systems." > Bill Potts, CMS > Roseville, CA > http://metric1.org [SI Navigator] .... -- James R. Frysinger Lifetime Certified Advanced Metrication Specialist Senior Member, IEEE http://www.cofc.edu/~frysingj [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Office: Physics Lab Manager, Lecturer Dept. of Physics and Astronomy University/College of Charleston 66 George Street Charleston, SC 29424 843.953.7644 (phone) 843.953.4824 (FAX) Home: 10 Captiva Row Charleston, SC 29407 843.225.0805
