US going metric?

"Hatunen" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 07 Jan 2004 14:01:40 -0800, Don Kirkman
wrote:

ISTM there's been a strong movement to honor all the historical figures,
sometimes at the cost of clarity. Cycles per second Hertz, centigrade
Celsius. My gauss is that it's just a way of paying ohmage.

Having originally worked in radio when the term was cycles/second
I have always felt the hertz to be something of a ******* unit,
but it did lead to the rather cute joke a few decades ago about
the "cycle" being an "Avis", or a Hertz-second.


Ah, not to go off on a tangent, but, that was back in the daze you had to
know about sine waves, vacuum tubes and superheterodyne receivers in order to
get a first class ticket from the FCC. KM
--
(-:alohacyberian:-) At my website there are 3000 live cameras or
visit NASA, play games, read jokes, send greeting cards & connect
to CNN news, NBA, the White House, Academy Awards or learn all
about Hawaii, Israel and mo http://keith.martin.home.att.net/

On Thu, 08 Jan 2004 05:45:23 GMT, "alohacyberian"
wrote:

"Hatunen" wrote in message
.. .
On Wed, 07 Jan 2004 14:01:40 -0800, Don Kirkman
wrote:

ISTM there's been a strong movement to honor all the historical figures,
sometimes at the cost of clarity. Cycles per second Hertz, centigrade
Celsius. My gauss is that it's just a way of paying ohmage.

Having originally worked in radio when the term was cycles/second
I have always felt the hertz to be something of a ******* unit,
but it did lead to the rather cute joke a few decades ago about
the "cycle" being an "Avis", or a Hertz-second.


Ah, not to go off on a tangent, but, that was back in the daze you had to
know about sine waves, vacuum tubes and superheterodyne receivers in order to
get a first class ticket from the FCC. KM

Or even a General Class. If you mean amateur tickets.

73
Ex-W8LBU

************* DAVE HATUNEN ) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *

metric and imperial. Perhaps he didn't count this as 'metric'

Huh. We have five tape measures around the house and not one has
metric on it at all. Maybe you should go to Home Depot and do a
survey.


I was referring to ones sold in Canada.

"Hatunen" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 08 Jan 2004 05:45:23 GMT, "alohacyberian"
wrote:
"Hatunen" wrote in message
.. .
On Wed, 07 Jan 2004 14:01:40 -0800, Don Kirkman
wrote:

ISTM there's been a strong movement to honor all the historical
figures,
sometimes at the cost of clarity. Cycles per second Hertz,
centigrade
Celsius. My gauss is that it's just a way of paying ohmage.

Having originally worked in radio when the term was cycles/second
I have always felt the hertz to be something of a ******* unit,
but it did lead to the rather cute joke a few decades ago about
the "cycle" being an "Avis", or a Hertz-second.

Ah, not to go off on a tangent, but, that was back in the daze you had to
know about sine waves, vacuum tubes and superheterodyne receivers in order
to
get a first class ticket from the FCC. KM

Or even a General Class. If you mean amateur tickets.

73
Ex-W8LBU


No, I meant commercial radio-telephone tickets. Ex-WB6CAS - Advanced. KM
--
(-:alohacyberian:-) At my website there are 3000 live cameras or
visit NASA, play games, read jokes, send greeting cards & connect
to CNN news, NBA, the White House, Academy Awards or learn all
about Hawaii, Israel and mo http://keith.martin.home.att.net/

alohacyberian wrote:

"Mark Hewitt" wrote in message
...
"alohacyberian" wrote in message
...

But, as I said, media weather reporting and forecasting is unlikely to
use
decimals. KM

True. But the forecasts are never that accurate to mean 20C is likely to
give different weather from 20.5C.

I've grown up with nothing but the celcius scale being used on forecasts.
Unfortunately newspapers always use Farenheight when reporting hot
temperatures as they are bigger numbers so looks more impressive!


Yes, I remember seeing a newspaper headline in the U.K. which read, "London
Sizzles in the 70's!" It wouldn't sound very impressive as "London Sizzles in
the Low to Mid 20's!" Which I've often thought is the reason TV and radio
stations in cooler climates in the United States use Celsius, because 5
degrees below zero seems much colder than 23 degrees above zero. And, of
course, they're also enamored with "wind chill factor" which makes it seem
even colder than it really is, but, of course "wind chill factor" would only
come into play for people who are naked, an unlikelyhood when it's 23 degrees
Fahrenheit or minus five degrees Celsius. KM

Wind chill factor comes in to play when one is well clothed too. Any
little exposed piece of flesh feels it especially (face, hands, ears, those
foolish enough to wear skirts when it's freezing) and gives a good idea as
to how much more quickly it would take to get frostbite on said parts. A
lot of cold winds are biting enough to go right through pants and jackets
as well. -20°C feels a lot different with an extra -20°C wind chill on top
of it. I'd found living in a more Northern climate with less wind, winter
felt warmer -- my theory being you got to carry a warm pocket of air around
you (ie.within your winter clothes), whereas in windier areas, that warm
pocket was whisked away, along with more body heat taken away as well.


DMW (-25.1°C, very light wind so no reported wind chill at the moment)

Don Kirkman wrote in message . ..
It seems to me I heard somewhere that Greg Johnson wrote in article
:

I learned both many years ago, and while I use fahrenheit, I can still
do the conversion in my head. My question, though, is why was the usage
of the explanatory "centigrade" changed to the astrological "celsius"?

It explains nothing. The prefix "centi-" in this case has a different
meaning from the prefix "centi-" for the SI units. There is no
"grade" in use of which this centigrade is the hundredth part.

Furthermore, in many languages "grade" or something similar has the
same meaning as "degree" in English, so degree centigrade is confusing
and redundant.

Furthermore, it is ambiguous since a grade (or grad, or gon) is a unit
of angular measure. A centigrade is to a kilometer as a minute of arc
is to a nautical mile.

Why isn't "Fahrenheit" something like "duocentiduodecigrade"? :-)

ISTM there's been a strong movement to honor all the historical figures,
sometimes at the cost of clarity. Cycles per second Hertz, centigrade
Celsius. My gauss is that it's just a way of paying ohmage.

You are overlooking the most important factor. It is an
*International* System of Units.

Names are more portable between languages than other words. Basing
the names of units on names makes it easier to get uniform symbols for
the units worldwide.

Gene Nygaard
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homep...ard/t_jeff.htm
But if it be thought that, either now, or at any future time, the
citizens of the United States may be induced to undertake a thorough
reformation of their whole system of measures, weights and coins,
reducing every branch to the same decimal ratio already established
in their coins, and thus bringing the calculation of the principal
affairs of life within the arithmetic of every man who can multiply
and divide plain numbers, greater changes will be necessary.
U.S. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, 1790

What about paper sizes?

Are A4, A3 etc. catching on?

So much easier than US Letter size. A3 is half of A2, A4 is half of
A3, A5 is half of A4 etc., etc.

Mike

Mike@com (Mike Groves) wrote in message ...
What about paper sizes?

Are A4, A3 etc. catching on?

So much easier than US Letter size. A3 is half of A2, A4 is half of
A3, A5 is half of A4 etc., etc.

Mike

um, A sheet (letter) is half of B, two B's make a C etc.
An E sheet is 34 x 44, do the math.

(Jo Stoller) wrote :

Greg Johnson wrote
why was the usage of the explanatory "centigrade"
changed to the astrological "celsius"?

The name was not actually 'changed'. 'Celsius' co-existed with
'centigrade' and 'centessimal'. In 1948 they decided that only one
name would be used.

Definition was nort exactly the same. However the SI unit for
temperature is kelvin (K, without the ° sign).

--
Erwan

(Markus Kuhn) wrote :

Was "centigrade" ever widely used in other languages than English?

It was in french.

--
Erwan