On Sun, 14 Sep 2003 22:08:29 +0300, Peter L. Peres wrote:

> > I offer that at times 1 liter IS a satisfying unit of measurement for
> > beer.
>
> 1 liter ~= 2 pints ? ;-)

"A litre of water's a pint and threequarters"  :-)

> > Twist drills don't drill round holes anyway.
>
> No but their un-roundness is less than the drill bit diameter tolerance.

You obviously haven't seen my drilling!  I can end up with a oval hole that's almost 2:1 in aspect ratio...

>...<

> > Any one standard unit of measurement is insufficient in modern society.
> > The appropriate standard depends on what you are measuring and for what
> > purpose.

I'll drink to that!  :-)

> > Would you deny mathematicians and scientists the use of radians because
> > degrees are more popular?
>
> No, but I'd like to be able to drill the holes for mounting an item I have
> ordered by mail without having to use an infinite precision calculator
> that also does fractions, and watching fractional inches tumble by on a
> metric dro really makes me ill. I'd rather read the phonebook backwards.

Ah, but that's not a problem with Imperial measurements /per se/, but the use of them by different parts of
society.  There's nothing saying that inches have to be expressed in 1/32nds as opposed to "thou" (0.001").
It wouldn't be a problem if drills were made in increments of say 0.01" instead of the various ways that they
are: by 1/32", the "number" and the "letter" sets.  But these have come about because engineering started
without any standards.  Similarly the differing types of screw thread: Metric had the advantage of being
defined from the start, but the others, BSF, UNF, UNC, BA, Whitworth, BSP and all the rest, were developed
individually to solve a particular problem at hand.

> PS: I am not heckling anybody, least of all a system of measures that is
> traceable to the William the Conqueror and maybe ancient Egypt (cubits
> etc). It's just that there are some problems when applying this nowadays.

Only because there's a mixture of ways to use it.  If you want precision engineering you use "thou", if you're
measuring a plot of land you use acres, but they are accurately convertible should you want to - just not in
powers of ten!  :-)  Oh, and some of it goes back to the Romans (miles, for a start) - William the Conqueror
(formerly "William the Bastard" :-) just used what had been in place for a thousand years or so.

Cheers,

Howard Winter
St.Albans, England

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