I can't help but get a faint smile, whenever I see one of these metric v Imperial debates, since, at the age of 7, I and my classmates, in a small village school, were considered capable of coping with learning both systems at the same time; why are today's schoolchildren unable to cope?
The laugh is that I remember being told, by a Frenchman schoolteacher, that the whole metric system is based on a false measurement of the world's circumference, so a metre shouldn't be the length that it is.
Ever wondered why water has a specific gravity of 1.0? A gallon weighs 10 lbs, and a gallon of white spirit, at an S.G. of .76, weighs 7.6 lbs.
A mile is the distance you can walk in a quarter of an hour; market towns are an average of 7 miles apart because that was the distance an oxcart could travel in a day; the top joint of an average man's finger is 1 inch; a yard is the distance from your nose to the tip of your middle finger, with your arm stretched out to the side (makes measuring cloth a doddle.) Fancy a 10-month year? Or a 10-day week? How about working 8 hours in a 10-hour day, then? How about an hour of 100 minutes? All of these were tried, and got nowhere; just because we have 10 fingers and toes doesn't make it a natural number to use.
Before the Witchfinder General is called out, to deal with me, I see no problem in using both systems. As an example, though, the Spitfire's wheel track is 185.4cm, or 73"; I know which I would prefer to divide by 72, should I contemplate a 1/72 kit.
Edgar
The laugh is that I remember being told, by a Frenchman schoolteacher, that the whole metric system is based on a false measurement of the world's circumference, so a metre shouldn't be the length that it is.
Ever wondered why water has a specific gravity of 1.0? A gallon weighs 10 lbs, and a gallon of white spirit, at an S.G. of .76, weighs 7.6 lbs.
A mile is the distance you can walk in a quarter of an hour; market towns are an average of 7 miles apart because that was the distance an oxcart could travel in a day; the top joint of an average man's finger is 1 inch; a yard is the distance from your nose to the tip of your middle finger, with your arm stretched out to the side (makes measuring cloth a doddle.) Fancy a 10-month year? Or a 10-day week? How about working 8 hours in a 10-hour day, then? How about an hour of 100 minutes? All of these were tried, and got nowhere; just because we have 10 fingers and toes doesn't make it a natural number to use.
Before the Witchfinder General is called out, to deal with me, I see no problem in using both systems. As an example, though, the Spitfire's wheel track is 185.4cm, or 73"; I know which I would prefer to divide by 72, should I contemplate a 1/72 kit.
Edgar
Comment