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Rheghead
30-Jan-06, 21:11
"A half litre of your finest beer please!"

"125 grammes of Scottish Cheddar if you please!"

"Sir, you were clocked going through Traill Street at 52.5km per hour, can I see your European driving licence?"

"Yeah, those new LCD TVs are great, I bought my 1.5metre widescreen on eBuyers last week and I wouldn't go back to my little 10 inch portable again"

And...

"At Fat Fighters, we want everyone to come back each week and show that they have lost 1.5 kilogrammes of fat."

Is the phasing out of Imperial measurements a much of a muchness or is it more erosion of our culture?

wickerinca
30-Jan-06, 21:19
Erosion of our culture!! Damn foreigners are just wanting us to be like them as they can't be like us!!!:p

rich62_uk
30-Jan-06, 21:31
The only difference it makes to me is I dont have to do the 11 and 12 times table with the kids.....Rich

Geo
30-Jan-06, 21:38
"A half litre of your finest beer please!"

If it means "a litre of your finest" for the same price as a pint, I'm all for it ;)

Rheghead
30-Jan-06, 21:44
If it means "a litre of your finest" for the same price as a pint, I'm all for it ;)

nah, a half litre will be the equivalent to a pint and is a gobfull short of a pint so you will get short measured. :p

JAWS
30-Jan-06, 21:57
I always thought meters were things you used to find out how many cubic inches of gas you had used.
If I wished to measure using a method dreamed up by Napoleon I would have arranged to be born in France.

Geo
30-Jan-06, 22:23
Speaking of short measures does anyone else find that pints in Wetherspoons are often a bit on the short side?

Cocoa
30-Jan-06, 22:31
dont know bout the 'mount of beer u get in wetherspoons but u do get lovely hot choc + cocoa :p
anyways, i only think in imperial really. metric is too confusing [mad]

caithnessboyagee
30-Jan-06, 22:45
Speaking of short measures does anyone else find that pints in Wetherspoons are often a bit on the short side?
Iam not really a beer person myself i perferer a bottle of magnor cider it is just over a pint maybe apint an a half lovely with ice cubes yummy .

lasher
30-Jan-06, 23:25
Iam not really a beer person myself i perferer a bottle of magnor cider it is just over a pint maybe apint an a half lovely with ice cubes yummy .
They are pint bottles! 568ml. You do get litre ones tho, but not seen them in pubs.:lol:

connieb19
30-Jan-06, 23:28
They are pint bottles! 568ml. You do get litre ones tho, but not seen them in pubs.:lol:They always just seem like more than a pint because everyone fills the glass with ice..:confused: ..YUK

_Ju_
30-Jan-06, 23:28
dont know bout the 'mount of beer u get in wetherspoons but u do get lovely hot choc + cocoa :p
anyways, i only think in imperial really. metric is too confusing [mad]


??? I've been here almost two years and have had three different answers asked of several people over this time as to how many pounds are in a stone (10, 12 and 14 incase anyone is wondering....and no, I don't know which one is right, though I suspect it might be 14 pounds).

With metric as long as you know multiples of 10 you can figure out how many grams in a kilogram or centimetres in meter. No complication at all.

Jeid
31-Jan-06, 00:20
Having been taught the Metric system, and also, since its now being taught in our schools, there's no chance the country is ever gonna go back to imperial.

Our country is backwards. We drive on the wrong side of the road and we use old forms of measurement.

DrSzin
31-Jan-06, 01:39
Having been taught the Metric system, and also, since its now being taught in our schools, there's no chance the country is ever gonna go back to imperial.Absolutely. We should hurry up and finish the job. We have several generations of people who are proficient in neither system, as _Ju_ has exemplified.

The SI/MKS system isn't perfect by any means, but it can be changed, and these changes would be so minor that many people wouldn't even notice -- they would largely be changes in convention. The old cgs metric system had its faults too, but it was more "human", just as the ancient Imperial system was.

I refuse to do calculations in imperial units, they're just too hard to do in your head.

We should stick to one system, and it has to be metric. AFAIK the US is the only other country in the world that uses Imperial units. But its Imperial units are slightly different from ours, and even the US is moving towards metrication, albeit more slowly than the proverbial snail.

On a lighter note...

Does anyone remember the spoof notice about the introduction of the metric day that went around THS in the early 70s? It announced that THS would move to a system of units in which there were 100 metric seconds in a metric minute, 100 metric minutes in a metric hour, and 10 metric hours in a metric day. We were to change from a system of 9 periods in a day to a system with 10. A certain teacher, who hailed from Wick and had taught at WHS blew his top when he saw the notice. He exclaimed (something like):

This is ridiculous! This High School is getting more ridiculous by the day. This would never have been allowed at WHS.

I believed at the time that he was the only person in the class not to realise it was a spoof! He can't have believed it, surely?

Jeid
31-Jan-06, 01:49
Metric time would be great

JAWS
31-Jan-06, 02:12
Is Japan metric? I don't think it used to be, I know they build cars the right way round!

crayola
31-Jan-06, 02:16
Of course Japan is metric! :eyes

Moira
31-Jan-06, 02:34
snip...
On a lighter note...

Does anyone remember the spoof notice about the introduction of the metric day that went around THS in the early 70s? It announced that THS would move to a system of units in which there were 100 metric seconds in a metric minute, 100 metric minutes in a metric hour, and 10 metric hours in a metric day. We were to change from a system of 9 periods in a day to a system with 10. A certain teacher, who hailed from Wick and had taught at WHS blew his top when he saw the notice. He exclaimed (something like):

This is ridiculous! This High School is getting more ridiculous by the day. This would never have been allowed at WHS.

I believed at the time that he was the only person in the class not to realise it was a spoof! He can't have believed it, surely?

Maybe the "certain teacher" started the rumour - I remember the same spoof notice going around Wick High School in the very early 70's. Have to say I believed it too, at first, for a very short time, you understand, but I was young & foolish then ..... :confused

JAWS
31-Jan-06, 03:02
At this point I have a slight confession. I've never had a Japanese car so I've never been able to find out.
I rank metric along with the old Lira.
"Thirty thousand Lira? What's that worth?"
"About 75p!"

They can't even stick to one name for their measurements. They had just about got me to consider 'cc's when they decided they should be 'cl's.
Then they give temperatures in degrees Centigrade but then decide they give them in Celsius.
They give measurements in 'mm's which is like giving Imperial measurements in tenths of an inch. What happened to centimetres, which they don't even spell in English, at least you don't need an magnifying glass to see them.

They decided Greenwich Mean Time should suddenly become Universal Time but at least nobody took notice of Algeria which wanted it to be called "Paris Mean Time diminished by 9 minutes 21 seconds."

And I'm supposed to take all that seriously.
Not on your life, not after they tried to convert me into accepting some silly sort of percentage for my 100 proof Navy Rum. That really was a step to far.

Whitewater
31-Jan-06, 09:59
I was brought up using the Imperial system, trained as an Engineer using Imperial units, all calcs etc in imperial units. When we changed to metric I had books of conversions from metric to Imperial, confusing at first and always took me twice as long. I got fed up with this and decided to chuck the lot, took the bull by the horns and went completely metric, the units had changed but the method of calculation was still the same. I found it much easier in all areas, and have never looked back since, and I do like a litre of beer when I go to mainland Europe.

weeboyagee
31-Jan-06, 10:53
At this point I have a slight confession. I've never had a Japanese car so I've never been able to find out.

...you can have a shot o' mine and see what you think!

Pint or litre? Don't care so long as it is beer and cheap. 25ml or quarter gill, needless to say I'm all imperial when it comes to that, 25ml looks like a sparrows contribution to the sea!

60km/hr or 60 mph - don't care, I always end up exceeding the standard, get caught and booked for it.

Off for my coffee - in a cup - 250ml I think!!!! ;)

DrSzin
31-Jan-06, 10:58
Lol, JAWS you have hit the nail on the head regarding the mks system. Using mm instead of cm is just plain inhuman. Similarly for ml instead of cl. One metre is 1000 mm; the difference between the two is big -- too big. Of course we should use the centimetre as an intermediate measure. The mks purists say not -- the fools. We have the same silliness with the ml, the litre and the cl.

But it's still better than the old imperial system:

1 foot is 12 inches
1 yard is 3 feet
1 chain is 22 yards
1 furlong is 10 chains or 220 yards
1 mile is 8 furlongs or 1760 yards or 5280 feet

1 acre is 1 chain by 1 furlong or 4480 square yards
1 square mile is 640 acres

1 pound is 16 ounces
1 stone is 14 pounds
1 cwt (hundredweight) is 8 stones or 112 pounds
1 ton is 20 cwt or 2240 pounds

Does that help _Ju_?

I learned and used this nonsense at primary school. Many of today's kids and young adults don't have a working knowledge of either system.

I quite often need to do numerical estimates in my head. The hardest part is always converting between years, days, hours, minutes & seconds. A useful thing to remember is that 1 year is roughly Pi x 10^7 seconds. It's inaccurate by less than 0.4% -- more than sufficient for quick estimates.

Even the metric day kinda makes sense. :lol:

Moira, we must have seen the same story. There can't possibly have been two independent ones! And my teacher was evidently wrong about WHS. :lol:

fred
31-Jan-06, 11:15
Having been taught the Metric system, and also, since its now being taught in our schools, there's no chance the country is ever gonna go back to imperial.

Our country is backwards. We drive on the wrong side of the road and we use old forms of measurement.
The old forms of measurement are the better forms of measurement, the decimal system is third rate.

If you have a pound of sugar and some scales you don't need weights to divide it up. Put sugar on both sides till they are equal and there are eight ounces on each side. Do it again for four ounces, again for two and again for one. There are twelve inches in a foot which is divisible by two, three, four and six, ten is only divisible by two and five.

DrSzin
31-Jan-06, 11:49
The old forms of measurement are the better forms of measurement, the decimal system is third rate.

If you have a pound of sugar and some scales you don't need weights to divide it up. Put sugar on both sides till they are equal and there are eight ounces on each side. Do it again for four ounces, again for two and again for one. There are twelve inches in a foot which is divisible by two, three, four and six, ten is only divisible by two and five.Good points fred. I've often heard it argued that we should count in the base-12 duodecimal system (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Duodecimal.html) instead of the decimal one we currently use. The prime factors of 10 are 2 and 5. The 2 is great, but who needs 5?

The prime factors of 12 are 2 (twice) and 3, so, as fred says, 12 can be divided into 2, 3, 4 and 6 equal parts.

It's a pity we don't have 6 fingers on each hand, else we would all be counting in duodecimal.

The main problem with imperial units is that they're not systematic and we count in decimal. If we had a duodecimal system of counting, and all units were based on powers of 12, imperial units would be great. But we have neither so they're not.

Maybe we should switch to binary or hexadecimal number systems, then we could plug our brains directly into our PCs...

Saveman
31-Jan-06, 12:26
While in foreign climes last year I found it took all of 10 minutes to get used to the metric system. By the end of a week I thought it was better, then I had to come back to "dark ages" Britain. :confused

fred
31-Jan-06, 12:56
Maybe we should switch to binary or hexadecimal number systems, then we could plug our brains directly into our PCs...
Our brains already use a binary system, it is the natural system, all of nature uses it right down to the simplest organisms. One cell divides into two, two into four, four into eight and eight into sixteen. That is why computers use binary, octal and hexadecimal, it is the natural way the simplest and easiest way.

The only thing decimal numbers are good for is people so stupid they have to use their fingers to count on, which unfortunately applied to the Romans and having the biggest army they insisted everyone conformed to them.

If the decimal system were abolished completely and children taught to count in an octal or hexadecimal system right from the start after a generation people would be looking back at how we do things now as if we were in the dark ages. Octal and hexadecimal arn't harder than decimal, they are a lot easier, it's only because people are taught to count in decimal from an early age and they have to convert everything to decimal to use it that they seem complicated.

Geo
31-Jan-06, 13:04
Yeah, what have the Romans ever done for us? ;)

scorrie
31-Jan-06, 15:03
Our brains already use a binary system, it is the natural system, all of nature uses it right down to the simplest organisms. One cell divides into two, two into four, four into eight and eight into sixteen. That is why computers use binary, octal and hexadecimal, it is the natural way the simplest and easiest way.

The only thing decimal numbers are good for is people so stupid they have to use their fingers to count on, which unfortunately applied to the Romans and having the biggest army they insisted everyone conformed to them.

If the decimal system were abolished completely and children taught to count in an octal or hexadecimal system right from the start after a generation people would be looking back at how we do things now as if we were in the dark ages. Octal and hexadecimal arn't harder than decimal, they are a lot easier, it's only because people are taught to count in decimal from an early age and they have to convert everything to decimal to use it that they seem complicated.

Aye, it gets brainwashed into you at an early age. The beautiful simplicity of the decimal point moving one place left or right to divide or multiply by ten.

Mind you, we can do much to help ourselves while we are saddled with the decimal system. Dividing by five is not so hard if you look upon it as doubling the original number first and then dividing by ten, equally, dividing by four is simply dividing by two twice.

I once made a bit of money from a couple of guys who bet me that I could not work out VAT on random sums of money in my head. The calculation of 17.5% is a lot simpler when you break it down to 10% halved to 5% and halved again to 2.5% then add all three together.

eg VAT on £450

£45 + £22.50 + £11.25 = £78.75

ps Is Imperial Leather illegal in the EU now?

scotsboy
31-Jan-06, 15:44
Not sure if it is illegal, but I know Keltic fans boycott it.

Saveman
31-Jan-06, 16:26
Yeah, what have the Romans ever done for us? ;)

Aqueduct, sanitation, roads, irrigation, medicine, education, wine, public baths, plus its safe to walk the streets now....

REG:
All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
XERXES:
Brought peace.
REG:
Oh. Peace? Shut up!

:lol:

welmoB
31-Jan-06, 16:29
IMPERIAL for me please lol

scorrie
31-Jan-06, 17:03
Not sure if it is illegal, but I know Keltic fans boycott it.

It is well known that they prefer LIFEBHOY

I think a guy called CAMAY Fraser once played for the Gers but so far this season their LUX been out as they have not played with enough ZEST.

scotsboy
31-Jan-06, 17:04
Touche - you know your soap products, Scorrie!

fred
31-Jan-06, 19:53
Aye, it gets brainwashed into you at an early age. The beautiful simplicity of the decimal point moving one place left or right to divide or multiply by ten.
It would be just as simple moving a decimal point left or right to multiply or divide by eight or even sixteen if we used sixteen individual numbers instead of ten. Someone taught to count in hexadecimal not decimal would see the number sixteen exactly how we see the number ten, it would be written 10 just the same and have a name which didn't mean six plus ten. If we adopted octal it would be even easier as no new numbers would have to be added, we would just lose eight and nine and eight would become ten.

The decimal system is an abomination and should be abolished as soon as possible. Octal or hexadecimal are natural, beautiful and simplistic. What is more beautiful than music with it's eight note scale? Each note exactly two times the frequency of the note an octave below it, eight times the frequency of the note three octaves below it.

If we were to adopt the hexadecimal system people would be teenagers till they were thirty two years old and retire at fourty, a much better system.

DrSzin
31-Jan-06, 21:16
Our brains already use a binary system, it is the natural system, all of nature uses it right down to the simplest organisms. One cell divides into two, two into four, four into eight and eight into sixteen. That is why computers use binary, octal and hexadecimal, it is the natural way the simplest and easiest way.I wouldn't say that. Better explanations are here (http://computer.howstuffworks.com/bytes2.htm), here (http://www.pcmech.com/show/internal/15/) and here (http://www.swansontec.com/sbinary.htm).

It's more a case of having two states which are "on" and "off", and which represent 1 and 0 respectively.

A standard notation for hexadecimal (hex) has existed for years, and there's a reasonable introductory account in the last link (http://www.swansontec.com/sbinary.htm) above. Basically, the numbers one through twenty (say) are written

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F 10 11 12 13 14

in hex.

So ten in decimal is written A in hex, eleven in decimal is written B in hex, ... , sixteen in decimal is written 10 in hex, ... , twenty in decimal is written 14 in hex, and so on.

Some of us have spent many hours pondering over assembly code and memory maps in hex. Ah, those were the days. Nah, not really...

rich62_uk
31-Jan-06, 21:43
Some of us have spent many hours pondering over assembly code and memory maps in hex. Ah, those were the days. Nah, not really...

YES THEY WHERE THE DAYS. I got paid alot more for what I could do on a computer and there was very little competition.... Rich :lol:

scorrie
31-Jan-06, 21:56
It would be just as simple moving a decimal point left or right to multiply or divide by eight or even sixteen if we used sixteen individual numbers instead of ten. Someone taught to count in hexadecimal not decimal would see the number sixteen exactly how we see the number ten, it would be written 10 just the same and have a name which didn't mean six plus ten. If we adopted octal it would be even easier as no new numbers would have to be added, we would just lose eight and nine and eight would become ten.

The decimal system is an abomination and should be abolished as soon as possible. Octal or hexadecimal are natural, beautiful and simplistic. What is more beautiful than music with it's eight note scale? Each note exactly two times the frequency of the note an octave below it, eight times the frequency of the note three octaves below it.

If we were to adopt the hexadecimal system people would be teenagers till they were thirty two years old and retire at fourty, a much better system.

I wasn't arguing FOR the Decimal system, just relating the supposed beauty of the system as extolled by the teachers.

As I stated earlier, Decimal is not nearly as frightening if people are willing to put the work in to learn how to manipulate it to simplify matters.

I would rate your odds on the Decimal system being abolished at about 9 to 1 against.

Ashes
31-Jan-06, 21:59
I was brought up as an apprentice in engineering using imperial measurements, like WHITEWATER since going metric many years ago engineering in the Uk would never go back to imperial, you can work to a closer tolerance in Meteric and all checking equipment in the aircraft industry is metric.
Kind regards Ashes

Rheghead
31-Jan-06, 22:03
Ashes, you will know then that inches take on a semi metric appearance in engineering as the basic unit is the 'Thousandth' of an inch.

_Ju_
31-Jan-06, 22:26
But it's still better than the old imperial system:

1 foot is 12 inches
1 yard is 3 feet
1 chain is 22 yards
1 furlong is 10 chains or 220 yards
1 mile is 8 furlongs or 1760 yards or 5280 feet

1 acre is 1 chain by 1 furlong or 4480 square yards
1 square mile is 640 acres

1 pound is 16 ounces
1 stone is 14 pounds
1 cwt (hundredweight) is 8 stones or 112 pounds
1 ton is 20 cwt or 2240 pounds

Does that help _Ju_?




Yes, it does..... if I ever get to do a quiz night, y'all better study upon your units, metric and imperial! Thanks, DrSzin

Whitewater
01-Feb-06, 00:00
Many years ago when abroad I was working in a colonial country which used imperial measurement, I was employed in a factory which produced aluminium foil ranging in thickness from 0.0005" to 005" in thickness. This foil had to be rolled and the rollers had to be ground so fine in order to produce the finest foil without puncture that the surface texture had a range of 0 to 0.5 microns (finer than a mirror finish which is 1 to 2 microns). The interesting part is that although the roller was imperial in all respects we had to go metric for the surface texture i.e. a micron is a millointh part of a meter. There was no imperial equivalent instrumentation available to do this.

The foil thickness was in imperial units the surface texture was metric.

DrSzin
01-Feb-06, 00:58
I would rate your odds on the Decimal system being abolished at about 9 to 1 against.Very good. It took me a few secs to get that one. :)

Primary school kids wouldn't like hex because they'd have more tables to learn, and each table would be longer. Just imagine doing homework with the wee ones:

"Ok fred, let's hear your D times table."

"Right," said fred:

1 D is D
2 Ds are 1A
3 Ds are 27
4 Ds are 34
5 Ds are 41
6 Ds are 4E
7 Ds are 5B
8 Ds are 68
9 Ds are 75
A Ds are 82
B Ds are 8F
C Ds are 9C
D Ds are A9
E Ds are B6
F Ds are C3
10 Ds are D0

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Stupid here actually worked that out rather than looking it up (http://www.engr.umd.edu/%7Ensw/ench250/number.htm) on the web. :eyes But at least I got it right -- I think...

Would it then be easier to introduce negative numbers, and the arithmetic thereof, via two's-complement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two%27s_complement)?

I would rate the odds of the hexadecimal system replacing decimal as F to 1 against. :lol:

ywindy
01-Feb-06, 01:07
Originally Posted by DrSzin
But it's still better than the old imperial system:

1 foot is 12 inches
1 yard is 3 feet
1 chain is 22 yards
1 furlong is 10 chains or 220 yards
1 mile is 8 furlongs or 1760 yards or 5280 feet

1 acre is 1 chain by 1 furlong or 4480 square yards(4840 sq yds actually)
1 square mile is 640 acres

1 pound is 16 ounces
1 stone is 14 pounds
1 cwt (hundredweight) is 8 stones or 112 pounds
1 ton is 20 cwt or 2240 pounds

Does that help _Ju_?


An acre is seventy paces by seventy paces, thus introducing the septagonal measurement system into the debate.


ywindy

DrSzin
01-Feb-06, 01:09
Many years ago when abroad I was working in a colonial country which used imperial measurement, I was employed in a factory which produced aluminium foil ranging in thickness from 0.0005" to 005" in thickness. This foil had to be rolled and the rollers had to be ground so fine in order to produce the finest foil without puncture that the surface texture had a range of 0 to 0.5 microns (finer than a mirror finish which is 1 to 2 microns). The interesting part is that although the roller was imperial in all respects we had to go metric for the surface texture i.e. a micron is a millointh part of a meter. There was no imperial equivalent instrumentation available to do this.

The foil thickness was in imperial units the surface texture was metric.Years ago, I bought a carpet in Edinburgh:

The width of the carpet was 3 metres;
They would only cut it in lengths which were multiples of a foot;
The price was £5.99 per square yard.

So the area of the carpet was measured in metre-feet and the price was quoted per square yard. :eyes The most amazing thing was that the salesman could convert from metre-feet to square yards and work out the price in his head. :cool:

As I've said before, I have a good memory for the strangest things...

But I forget the colour of the carpet...

DrSzin
01-Feb-06, 01:21
Originally Posted by DrSzin
1 acre is 1 chain by 1 furlong or 4480 square yards(4840 sq yds actually)Whoops, my left hand sometimes gets ahead of my right one when it shouldn't. :o


An acre is seventy paces by seventy paces, thus introducing the septagonal measurement system into the debate.Yes, and that's a lot more use than some of the silly units we seem to be stuck with.

ywindy
01-Feb-06, 01:27
So the area of the carpet was measured in metre-feet and the price was quoted per square yard. :eyes The most amazing thing was that the salesman could convert from metre-feet to square yards and work out the price in his head. :cool:

DrSzin
You are too modest. Obviously you were able to mentally check his calculations and proceed with the sale!
I can buy a 4.8 metre length of 6"x1" in BBS from staff who are either too old to understand metric or too young to remember imperial.
I'm for the status quo.
ywindy

JAWS
01-Feb-06, 03:02
The Imperial or Human System.

An Inch is the width of a thumb.
Afoot is the length of a foot.
A yard is the distance from the tip if the nose to the end of an outstretched thumb.
A furlong is a furrow long, the length which was ploughed before giving the animals pulling the plough a rest before turning and starting again.
An acre was the area a man could plough using either oxen or a horse in a day in good conditions.
The chain was an attempt at decimalization being 10 chains to the furlong with 100 links to the chain.
A rod is the length of rod needed to reach the furthest ox a team of oxen to encourage them to keep pulling a plough and became one quarter of a chain.
A mile, from the Latin mille, originated as a thousand double strides, i.e. left foot back to left foot. A double marching stride is 5 feet in length making a mile 5000 feet.
A hand is the width of a hand and is four inches. Ask any horse owner for the height of their horse!
These measurements have at various times been introduce by stages over the last two thousand years and eventually became standardised into the exact measurements most of which are still in use today.
All you need to do a rough and ready measurement of any of them is a human body.

The Metric or Non-human System.

The metric system was imposed as a result of a whim by Napoleon decided to invent a scientific system of measurements.
The metre is supposed to be one ten thousandth of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator, which they managed to miscalculate in any case. He even tried to change the names of the months with each month made up of three ten day weeks, each day having 10 hours, each hour comprised 100 minutes each of which had 100 seconds. Workers were to get every tenth day off work. (And Napoleon was a man of the people?) Everything was to re-start with the 21st September 1792 as Year 1 so we are now in the year AN 213.

Because the custom in Europe was to keep oncoming travellers on the right when passing them, Napoleon decided that it should be changed to keeping them on the left. Well, you have to do something to show people that you are in charge (a very scientific reason). All revolutionaries like to destroy all that came before them in case people start to remember what they have lost.

All you need to do to get a rough and ready set of metric measurements is to got to the North Pole and start walking. You are well advised to take a calculator for the calculations and don’t forget to take several pairs of shoes and plenty of foot cream.

And that makes more sense than using hands, fingers, strides and sensible farming practices?
Poor Napoleon, he succeeded at very little that he started, other than leaving scapegoats to take the blame for his mistakes that is!

fred
01-Feb-06, 10:43
The Imperial or Human System.
You missed out the ton, the weight of a large barrel of wine, I think that is both metric and imperial though.

fred
01-Feb-06, 10:54
Very good. It took me a few secs to get that one. :)

Primary school kids wouldn't like hex because they'd have more tables to learn, and each table would be longer. Just imagine doing homework with the wee ones:

When I was in primary school we learnt our tables up to twelve with no problems sixteen isn't much more, astronomers used to work with a 60 based numbers system at one time.

There is always the option of octal if you think kids today don't have the inteligence or are too lazy.

weeboyagee
01-Feb-06, 10:55
....just to stick a spoke in your wheels, what have you got to say about the Gaels where their counting system is in the old score (20) method.

When you want to say the year 1999, you say nine hundred on ten (1900) and four score (80) plus nine on ten (19). Simple as that! :lol:

fred
01-Feb-06, 11:06
I wouldn't say that. Better explanations are here (http://computer.howstuffworks.com/bytes2.htm), here (http://www.pcmech.com/show/internal/15/) and here (http://www.swansontec.com/sbinary.htm).

It's more a case of having two states which are "on" and "off", and which represent 1 and 0 respectively.
That's what I said, what could be simpler or more natural. Four switches which can be on or off can represent sixteen numbers.


Some of us have spent many hours pondering over assembly code and memory maps in hex. Ah, those were the days. Nah, not really...
Have you been using computers a long time then?

JAWS
01-Feb-06, 14:36
Fred, I'm ashamed of myself, fancy failing to notice a Barrel of Wine, I'll never forgive myself. :D
The use of 60 as a base goes back to the Babylonians which started prior to even the Ancient Greeks. Hence the use of 60 minutes and seconds and the 360 degrees in a circle.
Why 24 hours in a day? As far as I know you check the theories and choose the one you like, there seems to be no definite answer.

Patsy
01-Feb-06, 19:43
I prefer Imperial for sure. ;)

fred
01-Feb-06, 19:49
Why 24 hours in a day? As far as I know you check the theories and choose the one you like, there seems to be no definite answer.
I think originally they split the day into twelve parts and ignored the night as sundials didn't work anyway. Then when they devised other methods of measuring time and could know when midnight was they added another twelve hours.

fred
01-Feb-06, 20:08
I was brought up as an apprentice in engineering using imperial measurements, like WHITEWATER since going metric many years ago engineering in the Uk would never go back to imperial, you can work to a closer tolerance in Meteric and all checking equipment in the aircraft industry is metric.
Kind regards Ashes
I didn't think engineers were all that bothered about accuracy. They used to say that if you asked a mathematician, an engineer and an accountant what two plus two is the mathematician would say "four", the engineer would get out a slide rule then say "about four" and the accountant would whisper "what would you like it to be?".

Anyhow which is more accurate decimals or fractions? Well now every number which can be expressed as a decimal place can be expressed as a fraction but not every number which can be expressed as a fraction can be expressed as a decimal place, they can't even represent 1/3 exactly and the list is endless, literally. Therefore it seems to me that fractions must be more accurate than decimal places.

DrSzin
03-Feb-06, 17:08
I'm just catching up with some fredisms here...


Anyhow which is more accurate decimals or fractions? Well now every number which can be expressed as a decimal place can be expressed as a fraction but not every number which can be expressed as a fraction can be expressed as a decimal place, they can't even represent 1/3 exactly and the list is endless, literally. Therefore it seems to me that fractions must be more accurate than decimal places.What you say is of course true, but why the obsession with rationals? First you discussed binary cell division, now you're onto arbitrary fractions lol. Anyway, computers store numbers as as binary fractions, so they can't represent 1/3 exactly either. And none of the above systems has an exact representation of an irrational such as the square root of two.


When I was in primary school we learnt our tables up to twelve with no problems sixteen isn't much more, astronomers used to work with a 60 based numbers system at one time.But it's not a case of 16 vs 12, it's 16^2 vs 12^2 which is roughly a 78% increase (or a bit more if you don't include the one times table).


There is always the option of octal if you think kids today don't have the inteligence or are too lazy.It has nothing to do with laziness or intelligence; it's a case of how useful the tables are for larger numbers. How useful is it to know what fifteen times thirteen is? It's probably more useful in hex than in decimal but possibly not much. Anyway, I too was wondering about octal, but hex is surely more useful for computing simply because 4 bits make half a byte.

How far would we go in octal tables? Up to eight times eight, ten times ten, or perhaps even twelve times twelve? I don't know how useful it would be to know what ten times ten is when you're doing all your calculations in octal. Twelve times twelve is useful in decimal, so it might be just as useful in octal, but I can't think in octal so I really can't tell. :lol:



It's more a case of having two states which are "on" and "off", and which represent 1 and 0 respectively.That's what I said, what could be simpler or more natural. Four switches which can be on or off can represent sixteen numbers.That's not what you said. You were talking about cell division: one becomes two; two become four, etc. I know the arithmetic is the same, but I don't think successive cell division is a very good analogy -- sorry.


Have you been using computers a long time then?You could say that. And I've likely been an Internet user for longer than anyone else on here. Well, it was called the Arpanet way back then, but the Internet grew out of the Arpanet, and it's based on the same tcp/ip protocols, so I don't differentiate between the two for the purposes of longevity claims. :)

wickerinca
03-Feb-06, 17:41
Well here is my $0.001's worth!! I think that we should stay the same. The UK is well known for having our eccentricities.........it is what makes us British.......and I would be happy if every child that left the school could count and do simple arithmetic in their heads....no matter what system they use!!

And anyway........going into a pub and asking for "500ml of your finest ale" does not have the same ring to it, now does it gentlemen?:grin: Here it is a 20oz or a 12oz glass of draught or as I prefer to call then......."A big one or a little one!!";) [lol]

DrSzin
03-Feb-06, 17:48
Well here is my $0.001's worth!! I think that we should stay the same. The UK is well known for having our eccentricities.........it is what makes us British.......and I would be happy if every child that left the school could count and do simple arithmetic in their heads....no matter what system they use!!

And anyway........going into a pub and asking for "500ml of your finest ale" does not have the same ring to it, now does it gentlemen?:grin: Here it is a 20oz or a 12oz glass of draught or as I prefer to call then......."A big one or a little one!!";) [lol]I disagree. At present we have a godawful mishmash of the two systems, and half the population doesn't really have a feel for either of them.

As for beer, that could continue to be sold in pints, or we could switch to half-litres but still call them pints. Then the oldies could sit in the corner of the pub and reminisce about the owld days when a pint really was a pint and you could even smoke a fag with it. Nothing would make them happier. :)

PS I think you got the decimal point wrong in your £0.01 or $0.01 or whatever currency your 1 cent is in -- I don't have a Euro symbol in this keyboard...

scotsboy
03-Feb-06, 17:57
I never have a problem ordering beer in any system - I like the choice of beer sizes available in Europe as well, small medium, large and XL.

wickerinca
03-Feb-06, 18:02
I disagree. At present we have a godawful mishmash of the two systems, and half the population doesn't really have a feel for either of them.

As for beer, that could continue to be sold in pints, or we could switch to half-litres but still call them pints. Then the oldies could sit in the corner of the pub and reminisce about the owld days when a pint really was a pint and you could even smoke a fag with it. Nothing would make them happier. :)

PS I think you got the decimal point wrong in your £0.01 or $0.01 or whatever currency your 1 cent is in -- I don't have a Euro symbol in this keyboard...

Aaah! But surely if they are only teaching the metric system in school then that mishmash will disappear when us old dragons die out?:grin:

......and no I did not put the decimal point in the wrong place! I was inferring that my contribution wasn't probably worth as much as a cent (Canadian)

DrSzin
03-Feb-06, 18:10
Aaah! But surely if they are only teaching the metric system in school then that mishmash will disappear when us old dragons die out?:grin:

......and no I did not put the decimal point in the wrong place! I was inferring that my contribution wasn't probably worth as much as a cent (Canadian)I thought you might say something along those lines. ;)

Nope, the old system won't die out because it gets passed on from generation to generation by common usage and world of mouth. And we still have pints and miles and, er, actually, not much else! Well, not much else that's "official" anyway. Maybe we're closer to metric nirvana than I thought.

Anyway, you're just stirring it, I know you Cajun types have been metric for decades. Unless you've changed back since I was last there! :eek:

wickerinca
03-Feb-06, 18:11
I never have a problem ordering beer in any system - I like the choice of beer sizes available in Europe as well, small medium, large and XL.


.but that is my point Scotsboy!! Here (in Canada) it is a 20 or a 12, Europe has their system and Britain has theirs. I am all for change....but only when it improves something and not change just for the sake of it.........or to bend to the whims of others!:o)

fred
03-Feb-06, 21:15
You could say that. And I've likely been an Internet user for longer than anyone else on here. Well, it was called the Arpanet way back then, but the Internet grew out of the Arpanet, and it's based on the same tcp/ip protocols, so I don't differentiate between the two for the purposes of longevity claims. :)
So you were at university in America and if you were using tcp/ip it was after 1983, before that Arpnet was NCP based tcp was packet radio.

Now to get back to the subject at hand, we count in tens because we are taught to count in tens at school and we teach our children to count in tens because we count in tens ourselves and that is the only reason we use decimal, because we can't break the cycle, decimal is the VHS of number systems.

Base 8, as in pints to the gallon, is superior. Base 16, as in ounces to the pound is superior. Base 12, as in pence to the shilling is superior. Base 10 is fourth rate and any step towards decimalisation is retrograde.

George Brims
03-Feb-06, 21:27
Aqueduct, sanitation, roads, irrigation, medicine, education, wine, public baths, plus its safe to walk the streets now....

REG:
All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
XERXES:
Brought peace.
REG:
Oh. Peace? Shut up!

:lol:

I'll quote you Calgacus about the Romans:
"They make a wilderness and call it peace"

wickerinca
03-Feb-06, 21:35
I thought you might say something along those lines. ;)

Nope, the old system won't die out because it gets passed on from generation to generation by common usage and world of mouth. And we still have pints and miles and, er, actually, not much else! Well, not much else that's "official" anyway. Maybe we're closer to metric nirvana than I thought.

Anyway, you're just stirring it, I know you Cajun types have been metric for decades. Unless you've changed back since I was last there! :eek:

Ok! Ok! I give in:D Yes...it is fairly metric here.........distances, speed, stores are priced in Kilos and Lbs though........although one lady who was serving me at the meat counter did not know that 500gms was half a kilo!! Good job they have electronic scales with a big display or I would have been away with 200gms of ground sirloin to make my chili!!:roll:

DrSzin
04-Feb-06, 01:55
So you were at university in America and if you were using tcp/ip it was after 1983, before that Arpnet was NCP based tcp was packet radio.Lol, I would guess you're looking this stuff up -- I can't think of any other reason for your sweeping claims..

I was certainly using tcp/ip in the US from September 1982 onwards. I accessed the Arpanet via Satnet from the UK between either 1978 or 1979 (I forget which) and 1982. The ncp and tcp protocols coexisted for some time before ncp was finally switched off in 1983. I don't need to look up most of this stuff -- I remember it -- but I don't know when (or if) SATNET switched from ncp to tcp, and I'm too lazy to look it up. If I remember rightly, my first email address was abcd@mit-mc.arpa, where ab are the initials of my first name and cd are the first two letters of my surname, and it came into being in either 1978 or 1979. How did we get onto the Arpanet at that time? Er, well, nowadays it might be called hacking. ;) But it was ok with the powers-that-be at UCL -- we checked retrospectively, and they were happy that that someone was using their new networks.

The Internet may have come into being "officially" in 1983 but it wasn't usually called that in common parlance until some years afterwards.


Now to get back to the subject at hand, we count in tens because we are taught to count in tens at school and we teach our children to count in tens because we count in tens ourselves and that is the only reason we use decimal, because we can't break the cycle, decimal is the VHS of number systems.Absolutely.

But it could have been worse. If we'd had six fingers and a thumb we'd likely be using base 14. [disgust]


Base 8, as in pints to the gallon, is superior. Base 16, as in ounces to the pound is superior. Base 12, as in pence to the shilling is superior. Base 10 is fourth rate and any step towards decimalisation is retrograde.That's funny because it's true, well, it's kinda true. But you're surely not suggesting that we actually change our counting system from decimal to (one of) octal, duodecimal or hexadecimal? If we were starting to count from scratch I would support that proposal, but we're not. What's daft is what we have, or, more precisely, what the US has, namely a decimal counting system but systems of units in an ad-hoc mixture of bases, namely 12, 3, 22, 10, 6 for distance; 20 (fluid oz in a UK pint), 8 (pints in a gallon), etc, etc.

As long as we have a decimal counting system it makes sense to have a decimal system of units. Most of the world uses the MKS metric system, and it works just fine -- for most things.

It would be sensible in principle to switch to octal or hex for counting. Wanna start up a pressure group?

fred
04-Feb-06, 11:28
I don't need to look up most of this stuff -- I remember it -- but I don't know when (or if) SATNET switched from ncp to tcp, and I'm too lazy to look it up.

Oh I doubt SATNET ever used NCP, not unless they had a very long piece of wire running to the satelite.

rich62_uk
04-Feb-06, 17:10
As far as numbering systems are concerned I guess most of my basis is on the decimal system and binary. This is due to a certain Chinese primary school teacher I had who expounded the virtues of the abacus. At one time I could rattle the beads at quite a rate and at no time did I find a bar with 12 beads. Bearing in mind how long the abacus has been around and the extent of its use I see decimal as a natural way to go.I tend to agree with the statement regarding accuracy in that there are certain fractions that cannot be express as a decimal easily however for me I tend to use the metric system ( apart from in the pub) as I find it easier not having to possibly convert from an 8th to a 16th then maybe into a 32nd when trying to get an accurate measurement of area.

By the way there was a sort of internet back in 1976 it was called MAXIMOP and I used to access it from a small cupboard at the back of my maths classroom. It was more of an intranet linking together a number of colleges so as to access one computer there was a VOX coupler that had two rubber rings that you jammed a standard telephone receiver into. I spent many happy hours in that cupboard and this greatly explains my personality today.

In 1978 I got to use a main frame computer as I was at college studying Cobol, Tran and Fortran it was great having unlimited access.

However I still sometimes miss that cupboard. :~(

Rich......

DrSzin
05-Feb-06, 03:36
Oh I doubt SATNET ever used NCP, not unless they had a very long piece of wire running to the satelite.Lol fred, you're flying by wire here and you're not very good at it. Indeed, I would go further than that and point out that you're wrong in every respect. ;)

fred
05-Feb-06, 22:35
Lol fred, you're flying by wire here and you're not very good at it. Indeed, I would go further than that and point out that you're wrong in every respect. ;)
Oh well I'm always willing to learn.

So if the different networks like arpanet, satnet and prnet could use the same protocol why would TCP be needed to put the "inter" into internet? Wouldn't the different networks be able to communicate directly without a transmission control layer?

DrSzin
06-Feb-06, 20:11
So if the different networks like arpanet, satnet and prnet could use the same protocol why would TCP be needed to put the "inter" into internet? Wouldn't the different networks be able to communicate directly without a transmission control layer?As you can probably tell, I'm not an expert on networking protocols. As far as I'm aware TCP/IP is "just better" than the old NCP it replaced, especially for transmitting data between different networks.

Since my first post, I've discovered that NCP was indeed running on SATNET in 1979/1980, and they first started running TCP/IP over it in 1981.

Rich, I vaguely recall hearing people talking about MAXIMOP in the early 80s, and as far as I can tell it was a timesharing OS for the old ICL 1900 series (http://www.dsds.demon.co.uk/comp/maximop.htm), as opposed to a network. As you say, you would have dialled up from a terminal over the phone lines using an acoustic coupler, but this was a direct connection to a mainframe running MAXIMOP -- I think!

fred
07-Feb-06, 11:02
As you can probably tell, I'm not an expert on networking protocols. As far as I'm aware TCP/IP is "just better" than the old NCP it replaced, especially for transmitting data between different networks.

I'm not an expert either but I think TCP/IP was adapted to connect the three main networks used by the American military, ARPANET, SATNET and PRnet because they all used different protocols. SATNET and PRnet being radio networks were subject to atmospheric interference and needed a smaller packet size to reduce the risk of any one packet being lost and reduce resend time.