[USMA:32732] The MIT article is flawed!

[Han Maenen]

I had trouble loading this article on my computer. Sometimes my browser does not load pages for some reason I can not yet fathom (!) This article is the same stuff that we have heard from Napoleon in the early 19th century up to the BWMA and Inch Perfect today. This eternal obsession with fractions and division by three. Once again the metric system is depicted as rigid and inflexible. It is my conviction that what was convenient under the old measuring units can be used in the metric system. A meter, a kilogram and a liter can be divided by 2 and 4. The use of 25 and 300 mm modules is perfectly possible. Even the US fl.oz. finds life after death in a way. What was a fluid ounce becomes 30 mL. A Dutch pound equals 5 ounces of 100 g each, etc., etc. In many cases the BTU can be regarded equal to the kilojoule. This flexibility was understood from the beginning, except by Napoleon and other enemies of the metric system. Weights and measures as objects were often structured as follows: 2, 1, 0,5 (m, L, kg), and then also the decimal series were used. There is nothing wrong here. The one thing that is a definite no-no is giving unit names to 25 and 300 mm modules, or 2 and 0.5 m, kg, L. This was also argued in the beginning of the 19th century. As for division by 3: Many USA and UK units cannot be divided by three either. In many cases when it is possible it is not clearly visible and has to be thought out, like the 231 cubic inches of the US gallon. Can 231 be divided by 3? Yes, it is 77, but you don't see it at once. 'Liters exceed human thirst.' That is BWMA and Inch Perfect-prattle. I still can quench my thirst with a half liter. And if the author wants to prove his case against the metric system by pointing to the resistance it has met and stil meets, I can name many innovations which have encountered fierce resistance and even teetered on the brink because of that resistance, just as the metric system was brought to the brink of the abyss under Napoleon. Operating under anesthetics, vaccination against smallpox and other diseases, antisepsis brought to us by Semmelweiss and Lister. Judging from the resistance these innovations encountered, there must be some advantage in operating without anesthetics, contracting full blown deadly infectious diseases, or medical personnel not washing their hands before an operation or other treatment. Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis - the Viennese doctor who combated puerperal fever in the 19th century by insisting that medical personnel wash their hands in a disinfectant before treating or examing women in labour- was driven insane by the opponents of cleanliness and he died in an asylum in Vienna.   The BWMA and Inch Perfect c.s. will be very pleased with this article.   Han     The Trouble with the Meter � MIT �   The Trouble with the Meter By Ed Tenner May 2005 1 of 1 Amid the ideological and religious upheavals of the last 200 years, the metric system has spread around the world as an exemplar of science and rationality. But in both its champions and detractors, it has evoked as much passion as reason...............