I've just finished reading _U is for Undertow_ by Sue Grafton (2009,
G.P. Putnam's Sons). On page 121 of this murder mystery she describes
the Homestead Act of 1862 as providing "160 acres (65 hectares)" of land
to homesteaders. There is no ostensible reason for including the metric
indication; it has no part in the plot. Yet I find this gratuitous
inclusion to be delightful. Perhaps Ms. Grafton realized that while her
use of "miles" might be somewhat understood by non-U.S. readers, "acres"
might not be. Who knows her motive?
In the actual text of the Homestead Act, that amount of land was
described as a "quarter section", not in terms of acres (which were
later used in the act) nor in terms of hectares. Note that this is also
the year that the Metric Act passed in the U.S.
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=012/llsl012.db&recNum=423
A bit later, on page 127, a nurse is explaining Foley catheter sizes to
a trainee. "The most common sizes are 10F to 28F; 1 F is equivalent to
0.33 millimeters or .013 inches, 1/77 of an inch in diameter...". Note
the lack of a zero before the decimal in ".013 inches" though there is
one in "0.33 millimeters". Apparently, in Ms. Grafton's mind it is
metric practice, as opposed to general metrological practice, to use a
pre-decimal zero for such numbers. It's also interesting that she
included and indeed started the description with millimeters. I have not
checked the description of French sizes for accuracy, but the numbers
provided are internally consistent.
The author has a website at http://suegrafton.com/ .
Jim
--
James R. Frysinger
632 Stony Point Mountain Road
Doyle, TN 38559-3030
(C) 931.212.0267
(H) 931.657.3107
(F) 931.657.3108
