The Moneychanger
On 28 July 1866 the metric system became the legal measurement system in the US, and we've been ignoring it ever since. Why? 'Tain't human. Tain't to the human measure.
Everybody knows an inch is as wide as your thumb, a foot as long as yours, a yard stretches from your nose to your fingertip, but what's a meter? Why, one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole. Sounds like the sort of "scientific" nonsense that would come out of the French Revolution, and sure enough it did.
It was always interesting to me when I lived in Germany that folks at the meat market didn't order "grams", but a Pfund or a halbes Pfund (pound or half pound), & I don't think I every heard anybody order a kilo of salami.
I tell y'all, metric ain't human.
Yep, and that KPH is bullshit too!
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DeleteLOL!! Coming from a guy that has had to become a metric-imperial mathematical genius for matters of understanding customer's needs, this was great. :) Don't get me started on the KPH either....
ReplyDelete:) They use it in Vietnam also.
Delete1/1000th of a mile is 5.28 feet, pace off 100 feet and divide it by the number of steps you take, it will be roughly half that. The Romans were quite a bit shorter than modern humans, no way they marched with a 5.28 foot stride. The megalithic yard, if you are interested, http://www.robertlomas.com/megyard/ The book "Uriels Machine" goes into much more detail and describes how nicely both the Metric and English systems of measure can be derived from this one unit.
ReplyDeleteDavid Martin
Interesting and thanks for the info.
DeleteAnyone that sails, boats or most who have been in the military probably know that a Nautical mile is 6000 feet. The diameter of the earth at the Equator is approximately
ReplyDelete21,600 Nautical miles. There are 360 degrees in a circle and each one of those degrees is divided into 60 minutes. 360 x 60 = 21,600. The length of a Nautical mile is the "arc length subtended by an angle of 1 minute measured at the equator".
Of course that is somewhat theoretical. I don't think anyone has actually measured it!
CH
Thanks.
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