The “bomb expert” to whom you are referring was William Penney, later Lord Penney. He was a scientist rather than an engineer who did his PhD in crystallography. From my own experience as an undergraduate at the University of Natal in the 1960’s (before South Africa adopted the metric system), science used the cgs system (though the physics department was moving over to the mks system), while engineering used the fps system.
Given that most theoretical work was done in a scientific rather than an engineering sense, my guess is that he used cgs units. For the record, there is a long tradition in the UK of using metric units for the theoretical work and then converting to imperial units for general consumption – this is widely practiced in the UK health system – all patient weights and heights are recorded in metric units, but the nurse concerned as a look-up chart and converts to imperial units for the patient’s “benefit”. This concept is not new – in 1620, the polymath Edmund Gunter, having developed a forerunner of the slide rule to aid him with the new-fangled branches of mathematics called logarithms and trigonometry devised “Gunter’s chain” which had 100 links. The chain itself was one tenth of a furlong and a square chain was one tenth of an acre. He could use this chain along with trigonometry (and logarithms or his forerunner of the slide rule) to calculate the area of an odd-shaped field. His final answer would be in square chains, but he then had the additional final exercise of converting that into acres, roods and perches (40 perches in one rood and 4 roods in one acre). From: USMA [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John Nichols Sent: 10 July 2020 15:35 To: Stanislav Jakuba; John Altounji Cc: U.S. Metric Association; [email protected] Subject: [USMA 1488] Re: Moon flight Although this is completely unrelated: 1. What units system did they use for the Los Alamos project 2. Without the bomb expert from England who had sorted out the math for shaped charges for the SOS the bomb would not have worked 3. Roosevelt had to ask Churchill for the guy because he was so valuable to England Is my understanding John Nichols Construction Science, College of Architecture | Texas A&M University ph: 979.845.6541 | [email protected] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - <https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tamu.edu%2F&data=02%7C01%7CusMA%40lists.colostate.edu%7C803cb5d589744172310508d8251235f6%7Cafb58802ff7a4bb1ab21367ff2ecfc8b%7C0%7C0%7C637300107431871135&sdata=XxVfz0UEyI%2Fr%2BDGEuZUao%2B0Bb1mQyFWww654SsPX5cg%3D&reserved=0> https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tamu.edu%2F&data=02%7C01%7CusMA%40lists.colostate.edu%7C803cb5d589744172310508d8251235f6%7Cafb58802ff7a4bb1ab21367ff2ecfc8b%7C0%7C0%7C637300107431871135&sdata=XxVfz0UEyI%2Fr%2BDGEuZUao%2B0Bb1mQyFWww654SsPX5cg%3D&reserved=0 From: USMA <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Stanislav Jakuba Sent: Friday, 10 July 2020 8:41 AM To: John Altounji <[email protected]> Cc: U.S. Metric Association <[email protected]>; [email protected] Subject: [USMA 1487] Re: Moon flight Thanks for the feedback! On Thu, Jul 9, 2020 at 3:40 PM John Altounji <[email protected]> wrote: I liked both your emails. You should combine them and publish them to counter the bad social media. Way to go Stan, John Altounji One size does not fit all. Social promotion ruined Education. Education is values first, then knowledge. https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fjohnaltounji.weebly.com%2F&data=02%7C01%7CusMA%40lists.colostate.edu%7C803cb5d589744172310508d8251235f6%7Cafb58802ff7a4bb1ab21367ff2ecfc8b%7C0%7C0%7C637300107431871135&sdata=SxsCvMP5vGFy3R9rZHx9yz%2BEpx4UVEwBPJ3uBLdw0m4%3D&reserved=0 From: USMA <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Stanislav Jakuba Sent: Thursday, July 9, 2020 6:40 AM To: U.S. Metric Association <[email protected]>; [email protected] Subject: [USMA 1479] Moon flight One more comment to the "We flew to the Moon with inches" argument: Without trying to diminish the Moon Flight achievement, we would not have gotten off the ground without the metric designed and built-in-Russia first stage on the rocket. It was not because "made-in-Russia" made it cheaper; it was because just one scientific genius there, the only person in the world, figured out the technology needed to control the burning rate on that huge scale. So it is still today, although I do not know about the Chinese. NASA already was on the way to metrication judging from how many metric training seminars I presented at various centers from JPL to Huntsvile AL at that time. Why the US did not complete the "phasin-in-metric" is still debated. I blame mostly schools, where the teachers, on all levels, taught conversions instead of the "system." Trying to sell my training seminars to teachers organizations - "oh we know all about the metric units. Get lost." Stan J.
_______________________________________________ USMA mailing list [email protected] https://lists.colostate.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/usma
