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Martin W27/01/2010 11:47:32
940 forum posts
30 photos
Hi
 
I wish that they had been a little less accurate with their final definition by about 1.6% bigger. Then we would have had 25mm to the inch or 40 thou to the millimeter and it would have all been hunky-dory . Mind you if we described our measurements in full then 'deux millimeters' suddenly becomes 'eighty thousandths of one inch'   well approximately that is .  (Oh mert  
 
Cheers
 
 
Martin W
 
ps; My posting re the story of the metre actually predates the formal acceptance of the unit by over 100 years . Well according to Wikipedia et al.

Edited By Martin W on 27/01/2010 11:48:17

Edited By Martin W on 27/01/2010 11:49:09

Edited By Martin W on 27/01/2010 11:49:59

Steve Garnett27/01/2010 14:23:53
837 forum posts
27 photos
Posted by Martin W on 27/01/2010 11:47:32:
 
ps; My posting re the story of the metre actually predates the formal acceptance of the unit by over 100 years . Well according to Wikipedia et al.

 The whole saga from start to finish would have been better with no French involvement, obviously. They deliberately picked on something obscure, and then tried to obfuscate it even more, confusing everybody (and themselves) in the process. Of course 40 thou (only one syllable in that too) to the millimetre (ouch) would have been better, and much more convenient - who wants to deal with 39.3700? But oh, no - that would have been far too convenient for everybody else, and that would never do...
 
But then, they've always been like that, and have continued to as well. In the world there are essentially three analogue colour television standards - NTSC, PAL and SECAM. Obviously these are acronyms, but they are often referred to (quite accurately) as Never Twice Same Colour (the original American system, Pictures At Last (essentially a German modification of NTSC, and used in the UK) and - wait for it - System Essentially Contrary to the American Model. This last one, needless to say, is the French just tweaking the PAL one to make it slightly different...
 
I love the French - life would be so much more boring without them, wouldn't it?
 
Since this is a tongue-in-cheek thread, you might be interested to know that in fact we do know the answer to the question "How long is a piece of string?", and the answer to this is imperial, too.
 
Many years ago a researcher set out to find out the answer. He asked 100 people how long they thought a piece of string was, and when they held out their hands to show him, he whipped out a tape measure and measured the distance between them. He added together all of the results, and divided the total by 100. And then he very proudly announced to the world that a piece of string is 27 1/2 " long. And unless you come up with some pretty convincing evidence to the contrary, you can't say he's wrong, either... !
 
 
KWIL27/01/2010 16:55:41
3681 forum posts
70 photos
We really must improve the accuracy here, surely it is 39.370118" = 1 Meter!! At least they kept BSP even if it is expressed in some ridiculous measurements.
chris stephens27/01/2010 19:57:43
1049 forum posts
1 photos
Hi Kwil,
"We really must improve the accuracy here, surely it is 39.370118" = 1 Meter!! "
I agree entirely, "Meter", in this meaning, is in fact spelt METRE.
sorry could not resist.
chriStephens
Steve Garnett27/01/2010 20:19:56
837 forum posts
27 photos
Posted by KWIL on 27/01/2010 16:55:41:
We really must improve the accuracy here, surely it is 39.370118" = 1 Meter!! At least they kept BSP even if it is expressed in some ridiculous measurements.
 
Hmmm... according to the calculator in my PC:
 
1/25.4 = 0.03937007874015748031496062992126 (also confirmed up to 9 decimal places by a sharp EL-9300)

Which, if multiplied by 1000 gives 39.37007874015748031496062992126 thou/mm. 

How accurate would you like it to be? I merely truncated the correct answer...

(surely KWIL was joking though - wasn't he?)

Edited By Steve Garnett on 27/01/2010 20:21:30

Steve Garnett27/01/2010 21:09:18
837 forum posts
27 photos
Of course, to be absolutely fair, I didn't truncate it according to the normal rules - which would make it 0.0393701. But that's still more accurate than 39.370118" for a metre, because truncating at that point would give 39.370079", according to the calc.
Terryd27/01/2010 21:56:12
avatar
1946 forum posts
179 photos
Sorry Wheeltapper, but 10 inches to the foot would not be 'Metric', it would be 'decimal'.  in the same vane the 2 shilling peice, or the Florin, was introduced in 1842 in anticipation of the decimalisation of the British currency. 
 
Pity it took another 130 years to finalise,  I suppose that's just the British attitude tho'.  Don't do now what you can put off 'til tomorrow!
Terryd27/01/2010 22:06:22
avatar
1946 forum posts
179 photos
Dear Steve Garnett,
 
"Even metre itself has two, so as ever with the French language, you get a load more verbal garbage than is strictly necessary. "
 
If you know how to pronounce metre en Francais, It actually has one syllable, It's just that the English language has been bastardised by adopting words from so many other sources (mostly French) that it is just as impossible to find consistent pronunciation as it is to find any consensus on so called 'imperial' measures (they are mostly French anyway, which they dumped as being so illogical).
 
Now ther's a can of worms to open.

Edited By Terryd on 27/01/2010 22:06:57

Terryd27/01/2010 22:11:52
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1946 forum posts
179 photos
Dear Kwil, and Steve G
 
And of course the BA thread is  metric thread to imperial measures.
 
And you think it is the French who obfuscate?  after all we only have two 'ounces' and several 'miles' etc etc etc ad infinitum, but of course that's ok because they're 'imperial'.
Steve Garnett27/01/2010 23:13:26
837 forum posts
27 photos
Posted by Terryd on 27/01/2010 22:06:22:
If you know how to pronounce metre en Francais, It actually has one syllable, It's just that the English language has been bastardised by adopting words from so many other sources (mostly French) that it is just as impossible to find consistent pronunciation as it is to find any consensus on so called 'imperial' measures (they are mostly French anyway, which they dumped as being so illogical).
 

But hey, TerryD, they did the pronunciation bit on purpose too. They only ever use words that they think foreigners will have difficulty with, just so they can smirk at the weird pronunciations!
 
I agree that we adopted a lot of words from all over the place, but that adoption was legal. If the words are bastardised, it's because their parent language wasn't properly married to itself... and anyway, the origin of Metre is greek, with its modern usage more due to the Italians than the French.  As for the measured lengths themselves (imperial and otherwise) and where they came from, it seems pretty clear that the answer is 'all over the place' and they've all been mucked about with along the way. And the French just capitalised on this chaos - as per usual...
Bob Youldon28/01/2010 09:39:07
183 forum posts
20 photos
A metre, its not complicated; an old Sussex farm hand once summed it up, "simple boy, its a yard plus the thickness of a brick and a tile" So there you are, the definative answer from deepest Sussex!
 
Regards,
 
Bob Youldon
Gordon W28/01/2010 10:14:03
2011 forum posts
Standard lengths and weights, feet, pounds metres, whatever, were introduced over centuries, every time the peasents threatened to revolt because they were fed up getting ripped off. Nothing changed there then. Doesn't matter what you measure in, so long as everybody uses the same.
Bamber29/01/2010 11:35:36
7 forum posts
In my opinion the French only messed up the metre by a smidgeon, it should have been slightly smaller so that 1" is 25.6mm then 1.64" would be precisely 0.4mm
 
This would mean that all fraction inc measurements would convert cleanly to metric.
 
Dave
KWIL29/01/2010 12:00:11
3681 forum posts
70 photos
Does not matter what you measure in, so long as you say what the units they are. If you do not like metric or imperial, invent your own!
mgj29/01/2010 17:47:39
1017 forum posts
14 photos
I love French - it has excellent words in it - like Crecy, Agincourt, and a few sort of hung on like the Blenheim, Ramilies, Malplaquet, Oudenarde, Nile, Trafalgar, Talavera, Orthes Salamanca......Waterloo.
 
They just keep rolling off the tongue - can't think why when one is talking of a friends.
 
Why we even have a cat called Salamanca in honour of the French.
Terryd29/01/2010 21:43:17
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1946 forum posts
179 photos
Did I hear you mention 'Hastings' Meyrick? Oh no. you didn't. 
 
Perhaps because the Norman William beat the Breton/Dane Harold and gave us French monarchs,  together with most of our language and measurement systems ( yes, the so called imperial system is in fact French).
 
Agincourt and Crecy were battles between French monarchs (one of whom happened to have England as a dukedom) for supremacy in France.
 
Of course we must be proud of our one English Monarch - Edward Ironsides (April to November 1016 - over 6 months) The Plantagenets were French Nobles, The Tudors were French/Welsh, The Stuarts were Scots and apart from a Dutch invasion since then we've had German Monarchs.  Oh and of course Churchill was half American.
 
To get back to Measurement systems - perhaps it is the inch that is too large?  Of course that couldn't possibly be. in our little inward looking island, could it?
Terryd29/01/2010 21:56:57
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1946 forum posts
179 photos
Dear Steve,
 
the main units of weight we use are French (the ounce Avoirdupois and the ounce Troy - after the city of Goldsmiths Troyes in France) - forget the grain, pennyweight and barleycorn for now.  The pound is a French term (the original pound sterling was actually equivalent to a pound (troyes) of Silver (they still use the term 'pound'), Of course the Mile (whichever one of 20 'standard' miles you choose) is of Latin origin (due to invasions to the UK) etc etc etc ad infinitum.  All the French did was to standardise and simplify - no amount of Union Flag waving can alter that.
 
One unit of length, one of weight and one of volume.  And I wonder why it is the system for scientists worldwide,  and of course it is the reason that the UK government decided to adopt the Metric system in 1872 - no that's not a typo - unfortunately wars and changes of governments got in the way.
 
It reminds me of the argument used by a little England Tory mp when debating the adoption in the 1960s of the metric system that the British Housewife wouldn't be able to carry kilos of vegetables as the kilo was much heavier than the pound.
chris stephens29/01/2010 22:33:37
1049 forum posts
1 photos
Hi Terryd,
Methinks you have it a bit wrong. Normandy was not part of France at the time. This is why they had to invade, if you remember your history lessons. 
If you have ever wondered why we always refer to the 1066 affair as the 'Norman' invasion not the 'French' invasion, it is because the French had nothing to do with it.
William was only a DUKE of Normandy, for at the time it was a Duchy, but wanted to be KING of England. A King outranks a Duke in any game of "Top Trumps".
chriStephens

Steve Garnett29/01/2010 22:36:30
837 forum posts
27 photos
Hmm... "pound" isn't French at all. In the UK its use is from the old english 'pund', and that came from the German punda and its origins are, of course, Latin. So if the French use it, it's probably because they hijacked it from the same sources.
 
And as for a bit of Union Flag waving - well actually that's not difficult at all, when you consider that the true founding father of Metrication in all but name was John Wilkins - just read  An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language if you want to see why. And yes, this essay pre-dates Mouton's efforts by two years. And anyway, if Mouton's system had been adopted the metre would have been about 2 of the current ones, and they're quite large enough already. I'm prepared to give Mouton the credit for using multipliers rather than different names for multiples of the same unit, but that's about it.
 
A brief criticism of Wilkins' 'Essay' may be found here.
 
Some of my antecedents are French, and my middle name is essentially a French placename as well - but I'm still not sticking up for them!
mgj30/01/2010 08:51:20
1017 forum posts
14 photos
I agree that Hastings was slightly unfortunate, but then anyone can have a bad day, and it was a long time ago.
 
As for the rest - one may discuss detail, but at the end of the day, it was the French that referred to the enemy as the English.
 
So we won.
 
I suspect therefore that, as necessary we took the best bits of their measuring system and left the worst. 
 
Which is why we (as a regiment) only recently stopped eating off Joseph Bonapartes table - which we acquired when we swapped it with 14H. They got his silver piss pot. (Same principle). 

Edited By meyrick griffith-jones on 30/01/2010 08:52:25

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