I've done the conversion of 208 liters (in the barrel mentioned) to U.S.
gallons and I came out with 54.95 gallons, not 52.6 gallons. This is
even closer to the "nominal" 55 gallon figure commonly used and more
emphatically makes your point.
By the way, and off topic, I looked at that Mil-Spec reference on the
Wikipedia page. They mention a NATO color code for fuel cans: red for
gasoline (petrol in British English), yellow for diesel fuel, and blue
for kerosene (paraffin in British English?). I use 2 "5 gallon" plastic
jugs to purchase and transport diesel fuel for my tractor and they are
also yellow. (When 5 gallons of fuel is pumped into the jug enough head
space remains that I'm confident I could carry 20 L, equivalent to
nearly 5.3 gallons, in it.) The stores here sell similar cans for
gasoline that are red. Apparently this NATO standard has spread! Now, if
only NATO's use of metric units would do likewise....
Jim
On 2010-08-16 1835, Pat Naughtin wrote:
On 2010/08/17, at 07:55 , Martin Vlietstra wrote:
Many people might be familiar with the “Jerry can”. I understand that
it was so named because if was developed by the German forces during
WWII – it was much more ergonomically designed that the equivalent
Allied equipment and the design was quickly copied.
BTW, the Jerry can hold 20 litres.
Dear Martin and All,
As I understand it the 'Jerry Can' was a decimal division of the 200
litre drum that is still in common use. This drum was designed to hold
200 litres of liquid and to have an air space of about 8 litres to allow
for expansion (I think that oil and oil products have fairly high
coefficients of expansion but please correct me if I am wrong).
Matching the 200 litre drum and the 20 litre 'Jerry Can' gave the
convenience of being able to do decimal calculations of fuel
requirements in a military setting. There is an interesting history of
the 'Jerry Can' at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerrycan but no mention
is made of the oil drum in this article.
The 200 litre drum came to be called the 55 gallon drum in the USA (200
÷ 3.8 = 52.6 USA gallons) and the 44 gallon drum in the UK and the
Commonwealth countries (200 ÷ 4.5 = 44.4 UK gallons). It is common to
see four-wheel drive vehicles in Australia with two welded frames on
their backs that are designed to carry two of the 20 litre 'Jerry Cans'
often with one for fuel and one for water.
The idea of having a large (about 200 L) and a small (about 20 litre)
container goes back a long way. Consider this quotation from the Bible
with my comments from
http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/MetricationTimeline.pdf
*
*
*/
*Ezekiel 45*
*/Ye shall have just balances, and a just ephah, and a just bath./*
*/The ephah and the bath shall be of one measure, that the bath may
contain the/*
*/tenth part of an homer, and the ephah the tenth part of an homer: the
measure/*
*/thereof shall be after the homer./*
*
*
*Here's another decimal division but with two **/
*names this time — /bath /for wet goods and /ephah /for dry goods. … I*
/**t is curious that the /homer/, at about 200 litres, is nearly the
same size as the standard **200 litre petrol and oil drum designed in
Germany in the 1930s. The /bath/, at one tenth of this **amount, is
equivalent to the small square-shaped fuel carrier that became known in
many **English-speaking countries as the '/jerry-can/' from its German
origins. For most of the 20th **century, the 200 litre drum was known as
a /44 gallon drum /in the UK and its colonies, and **as the /55 gallon
drum /in the USA because of their gallons of different sizes.*
/*
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Author of the ebook, /Metrication Leaders Guide,/ see
http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html
Hear Pat speak at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lshRAPvPZY
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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metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they now save
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