Well, I said that what I was saying wasn't an objection. :)
Two feet? And I thought there were three -- in every yard. =]{;o)>
Seriously, though, I had forgotten about the survey foot. If we'd gone
metric when we should have (in the nineteenth century), we wouldn't have to
deal with such madness.
Bill Potts, CMS
(Not uncoordinated, but forgetful)
Roseville, CA
http://metric1.org [SI Navigator]
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of James Frysinger
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2007 13:38
To: U.S. Metric Association
Subject: [USMA:39819] RE: Tennessee Coordinate System
Talk about uncoordinated, Bill! You've got your feet mixed up!
We have two feet in this country, as of 1959. That's when the yard was
redefined from 1 yd = (3600/3937) m (as of 1893) to 1 yd = 0.9144 m.
Surveyors raised a stink so Congress enacted the statute mile and the survey
foot, using the older, 1893, definition of the yard in each case.
A point of trivia is that there are no inches in the survey foot; it is
divided into 100 parts. That Congressional act is most likely the basis for
"statute" in "statute mile", etymologically speaking.
TN code has it right.
Jim
Bill Potts wrote:
> And to think that I always thought Tennesseans were uncoordinated
> (something to do with sour mash). :)
>
> Interestingly, that final equation uses the now-deprecated (even
> though quite precise) 39.37 inches per meter ratio, rather than the
> now statutorily exact ratio of 0.0254 meters per inch (or 0.3048 meters
per foot).
>
> This isn't an objection. As taking it to two more decimal places only
> yields 39.3701, 39.37 is a more than adequate ratio. And, of course,
> we're talking about an 80-year-old standard.
>
> Bill Potts
> Roseville, CA
> http://metric1.org [SI Navigator]
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of James Frysinger
> Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2007 12:37
> To: U.S. Metric Association
> Subject: [USMA:39817] Tennessee Coordinate System
>
>
> ...
>
> (c) The definition of the "U.S. Survey Foot," with the associated
> factor of
> 1 m = 39.37/12 feet, shall be used in any conversion necessitated by
> changing values associated with the Tennessee Coordinate System of
> 1983, from meters to feet.
>
>
>
>
--
James R. Frysinger
632 Stony Point Mountain Road
Doyle, TN 38559-3030
(H) 931.657.3107
(C) 931.212.0267
