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Printing industry
slowly metricating?
I don't know about the US, but in the UK the
printing industry was one of the first industries to be metricated. The
stationery merchants and office furniture merchants loved it - they could reduce
the number of stock lines dramatically when quarto and foolscap lines of
stationery were replaced with A4 lines of stationery (it halved the
number of stock lines that they carried with no real reduction in customer
choice).
Anybody who uses a computer printer will notice
that it can be set for either US Letter or A4. I have often muttered under my
breath ("Bl**dy Yanks - can't they get their house in order" - by definition
present company excepted of course) when a piece of software defaults to US
Letter size, our printers are set to A4 and the whole system siezes up (or waits
for manual intervention).
BTW, a few years ago I was testing on a piece
of software that had to operate in both Germany (where I was working) and
in the US. I could not buy any Letter of Foolscap paper, so I
resorted to taking A3 paper and using a guilotine to cut it to
size.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, November 18, 2005 4:05
AM
Subject: [USMA:35231] Re: BBs
Printing industry slowly metricating? I thought this is
one industry outside of aircraft and construction that would be impossible to
even budge from the USC units. Can you give any specific
examples?
The only time I've seen grams on ammunition cases was on some
Greek-made 9 mm rounds. It was all in English, but all SI. And I
doubt they had too many complaints about it.
For what it's worth, a guy
whose wife fills her own shells told me that she weighs the loads in
grams. Not grains--I specifically asked.
On 11/17/05, Jim
Elwell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
At
17 11 05, 04:12 PM, Remek Kocz wrote:
>You're talking about airsoft
BB's, right? I've seen them in the 6.0
>mm/0.12 g
designations at Gander Mountain. Never saw any USC
units,
>even in parentheses. However, once I walked over to
the shotgun
>shells, the reality set in, as everything was in inches
and (!!)
>grains. Some manufacturers did list the shell
lengths in
>milimeters, but that was a rarity. There is an
industry that we can
>pester about including metric information on
their products.
The firearms & ammunition industry is like the
printing industry:
slowly metricating, but so thoroughly steeped in a
variety of oddball
units that it will take awhile.
For example,
when you buy 9 mm rounds, the bullet weights are listed
in grains.
Winchester lists their Russian 7.62 round as "7.62x39mm
Russian, 123
grain, USA Full Metal Jacket." (A grain, of course,
being 1/7000th of a
pound, or 64.8 mg.)
In fact, I do not recall bullet or load
(gunpowder) weights ever
using units other than grains.
Accuracy
in firearms is often measured in minutes of arc, but I guess
that
arguably qualifies as a "unit in use with SI"
http://www.answers.com/topic/minute-of-arc:
"This
unit is commonly found in the firearms industry and
literature,
particularly that concerning high-powered rifles. It is
popular
because 1 MOA almost exactly subtends one inch at 100 yards, a
traditional distance on target ranges."
Jim
Elwell
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