At the Archives of Nijmegen we are now proofreading articles that will appear in a great History of the City that will be published early next year. One of the articles is about the time the French came to Nijmegen (1795). Historians sometimes use historic units in their articles, and I do not object to it if the context is right. Here we saw such usage, but it was wrong nevertheless in this case, Nijmegen was 10 miles from Arnhem according to the text. Too bad, these are British miles as the distance between the two cities is 16 km. I had the correction inserted that the mile we used before metrication was about 5.5 km and that the unit used in the text was the British mile. When the book is published our own historic unit will figure there. Arnhem was about 3 miles from Nijmegen in 1795. Maybe some list members will object, because I did not press for metrication of that distance. But it was about 1795 and I did object to a British unit which was far out of context. And although I surely do not want our own old units back, I still respect them as they have been part of our past.
Han Historian of Dutch Metrication, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
