Now I remember another "kg" substitution, where the G stood for the gal, a
shortened Galileo. It has the advantage of being derived from the name of a
scientist connected with the subject, and it adheres to the BIPM rule for
symbol being a "capital letter" only if derived from a proper name.
Stan J.
----- Original Message -----
From: Pat Naughtin
To: U.S. Metric Association
Cc: U.S. Metric Association
Sent: 08 Jan 30, Wednesday 04:56
Subject: [USMA:40308] Re: kg
On 2008/01/30, at 2:06 AM, Pierre Abbat wrote:
The problem with using "G" for the grave is that it has since been used for
the gauss. Even though the gauss has been replaced with the tesla, more
people would think "gauss" when they see "G" as a unit symbol.
Pierre
Dear All,
Perhaps now is the time to re-suggest the word 'gry' as an international
unit, only this time for mass rather than length. I would pronounce this as in
'angry' and 'hungry'. It seems to have several properties that might make it
useful:
1 It is a short word
2 It has only one syllable
3 It is not used elsewhere in the English language and I suspect that it is
not used much in other languages (although I don't know if this is the case).
4 It has a connotation of being an abbreviation of the word, 'gravity', which
is a property shared by all objects with mass
5 It fits well with the prefixes and it is easy to pronouce either alone or
in combination (say out loud: nanogry, microgry, milligry, gry, kilogry,
megagry, gigagry etc).
6 The word gry has a long (classical) history in that it is derived from the
ancient Greek word, gry, where it meant 'a small amount'. This use seems to
imply a small amount of mass rather than a small amount of length but my Greek
isn't up to such subtleties.
7 The idea of using a gry as a measuring unit (for length) goes back to John
Locke in 1679 only 11 years after John Wilkins developed the original idea for
an international system based on a 'universal measure'.
8 Thomas Jefferson probably developed his ideas for a decimal measuring
system from John Locke's gry but he used the word point instead in his 1790
report.
9 The clash with the gauss is not a great issue as the gauss is deprecated
anyhow. Surely it's time for our magnetic friends to move on!
10 The gry could then have the symbol G
The web site at: http://www.onlineunitconversion.com/gry_to_shackle.html says
'In 1813, the gry was revived in another decimal measurement scheme in
Britain.' but I have never heard of such a scheme at that time. Can anyone help
me with details of a decimal measurement scheme in the UK in 1813?
Of course there is the small problem of the gry riddle (see:
http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/article008.html ) but I digress as this
is definitely off topic.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has helped
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