"How the EU works: In Germany, they make the rules, in Britain, theyobey the rules, in France, they bend the rules, in Spain, they break therules, and in Italy they have no rules at all."

On 11/20/2011 10:07 AM, Dan Stephenson wrote:

Question: did a pound once correspond to a pound weight of silver?

Sorta kinda.

Question also: anyone know the origin of dollar and why it is used? I
visited a Dollar Castle once in Scotland. Maybe there was a Scot in our
Founding Fathers. Hmm.

IIRC dollar derives from thaler, not Dollar in Scotland.
And there were a number of Founding Fathers with Scottish antecedents.

On 11/20/2011 10:11 AM, Dan Stephenson wrote:

Hey, so what is a guinea, anyway? I read about them in the old Ian
Fleming novels. And wat is a crown and a half-crown? I recall James Bond
spending one of those on a doctor and supposedly it was a large
denomination.

A guinea is 21 shillings.
A crown was 5 shillings
A half-crown was 2/6 (two-and-six)
A florin was two shillings.
A tanner was a sixpence.

On 2011-11-20 03:27:07 -0600, Martin said:

On Sat, 19 Nov 2011 20:44:52 -0600, Dan Stephenson
wrote:

On 2011-11-19 09:36:58 -0600, Johannes Kleese said:

(One more question though: Which unit do you use for parts smaller than
an inch? Don't tell me you stole the prefixes from the darn metric
system and use milli- or microinches.)

As I have related already, the benefits are standardizations, not
_which_ standard, and the metric system is simply one standard that
eschews the benefits of natural subunits and has only decimalization to
go on.

So if *I* wanted to measure less than an inch, I could choose decimal
inches if I chose, however, I would probably refer to ratios of two
because that is what all the tooling uses. For example, half inch,
quarter-inch, 5-16ths etc.. For firearms the sub-inch are referred-to
in calibers, referencing one inch. So a 30-cal is a decimalization to
0.3 inch. A .22 is 22/100ths of an inch. What wonderful flexibility.
I can use whatever I want and whatever standard has natually evolved.
I do not have to shoe-horn in a 7.62mm or 5.56mm, but I could if I
wanted to. I mean, we only did that to provide a metric decimalization
for NATO after WW2, based on long-established standards based on
caliber.

and not because Germany used metric, designed and produced better
guns?

I have a Mauser and it is a fantastic bolt-action rifle.

http://web.mac.com/stepheda/Home_Page/Guns.html

However, the 30-06 cartridge was used by the M1 Garand, and while the
Mauser was 7.92 mm (32 cal), the 30-06 cartridge had higher speed and
an autoloading magazine with a greater round capacity (8 vs 5). So
when the 7.62x51mm M80 round was invented, it was understandable that
the same bullet from the 30-06 cartridge would go forward. There was
some competition at the time. Both the 30-06 and 8mm Mauser round were
too powerful, though, for the original goals for the new NATO round to
be full-automatic. As it turned out, the M80 was too powerful too for
a controlled fire.

--
Dan Stephenson
http://web.mac.com/stepheda
Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too)

On 2011-11-20 09:35:00 -0600, S Viemeister said:

On 11/20/2011 10:11 AM, Dan Stephenson wrote:

Hey, so what is a guinea, anyway? I read about them in the old Ian
Fleming novels. And wat is a crown and a half-crown? I recall James Bond
spending one of those on a doctor and supposedly it was a large
denomination.

A guinea is 21 shillings.
A crown was 5 shillings
A half-crown was 2/6 (two-and-six)
A florin was two shillings.
A tanner was a sixpence.

Right, I remember a little now, how a guinea was one pound one
shilling. Rather, it was 21 shillings because it could be divided into
three sets of seven, iirc what I once knew.

Wasn't there a three-pence and two-pence coin? I have "thruppence" and
"tuppence" on my tongue for some reason. I bet the reason the 20-pence
coin is non-round is because the florin or whatever, was also not round.

And I recall a Hapenny bridge in Dublin because the toll was once a
half-penny. I wonder if there were other sub-penny divisions.

I seem to recall a super-pound coin, too, a sovereign? Right? Was
that the only super-pound coin (other than a guinea, technically).

All the harkens to a time when a pound was a LOT of money. Even in a
film just 40 years ago, from watching one of those George Smiley films
with the title character portrayed by Obi Wan Kenobi, there was an
issue made about an informant and a 'large sum' of something like 6
pounds being referenced.
--
Dan Stephenson
http://web.mac.com/stepheda
Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too)

On 2011-11-20 09:32:43 -0600, Wolfgang Schwanke said:

Dan Stephenson wrote
in news:2011112009132350813-stephedanospam@maccom:

On 2011-11-20 04:18:19 -0600, Wolfgang Schwanke said:

Or plough a hectare. Oh wait, is that a measure in System
Internationale?

Yes it is. An are is 10x10 meters. A hectare is 100 of those.

Actually, no, it is not. It is a division derived from the metric
system but it is an artificial construct so people could have a unit
that was something of a suitable size for farm land sizing, a purpose
previously served by the acre.

Nobody denies that some common metric units are deliberately tailored
to be close to ancient ones. I'm not sure about your acre theory
though, the hectare is also used in countries who never had the acre
unit.

Agreed, understand. The common thread is that dealing with land area
begs for a unit of measure large enough to present huge areas, yet not
so huge that sub-divisions cannot be easily made. Acres and hectares
service this purposes.

The use of a kilogram is similar, insofar as it isn't the base unit
(gram) but (despite the technicality of 'kilo' mean one thousand)
nevertheless being the practically-used unit of mass.

I totally understand the benefits of metric. I'm an engineer. But I
am also jaded by standardizations made by committees that don't have a
domain competency. Add you own comments about the EU regulation on the
shape of bannanas, he


--
Dan Stephenson
http://web.mac.com/stepheda
Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too)

On 2011-11-20 09:29:40 -0600, Wolfgang Schwanke said:

Dan Stephenson wrote in
news:2011112009075315062-stephedanospam@maccom:

On 2011-11-20 04:07:09 -0600, Wolfgang Schwanke said:

Didn't the Irish use the variation, punt?

That's just Irish Gaelic for pound.

That's another thing. Who thought it would be a good idea to replace
English for Gaelic, without an English translation?

Hey, I respect the desire to keep a tradition. But to put up traffic
signs that make no correspondence to my map, simply makes me want to
stop in the road and decypher. It is a road hazard to have Gaelic-only
signage.
--
Dan Stephenson
http://web.mac.com/stepheda
Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too)

On 2011-11-20 09:31:32 -0600, S Viemeister said:

Question also: anyone know the origin of dollar and why it is used? I
visited a Dollar Castle once in Scotland. Maybe there was a Scot in our
Founding Fathers. Hmm.

IIRC dollar derives from thaler, not Dollar in Scotland.
And there were a number of Founding Fathers with Scottish antecedents.

Ah, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaler

Given thaler is a germanic origin for "valley", it makes me figure,
Dollar Glen, which named Dollar Castle, is really double-named, insofar
as Glen is also a name for valley.
--
Dan Stephenson
http://web.mac.com/stepheda
Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too)

On 11/20/2011 11:53 AM, Dan Stephenson wrote:
On 2011-11-20 09:31:32 -0600, S Viemeister said:

Question also: anyone know the origin of dollar and why it is used? I
visited a Dollar Castle once in Scotland. Maybe there was a Scot in our
Founding Fathers. Hmm.

IIRC dollar derives from thaler, not Dollar in Scotland.
And there were a number of Founding Fathers with Scottish antecedents.

Ah, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaler

Given thaler is a germanic origin for "valley", it makes me figure,
Dollar Glen, which named Dollar Castle, is really double-named, insofar
as Glen is also a name for valley.

There's a lot of that - eg River Avon is river river. There are one or
two names which have more than two versions.

On 11/20/2011 11:42 AM, Dan Stephenson wrote:
On 2011-11-20 09:35:00 -0600, S Viemeister said:
On 11/20/2011 10:11 AM, Dan Stephenson wrote:
Hey, so what is a guinea, anyway? I read about them in the old Ian
Fleming novels. And wat is a crown and a half-crown? I recall James Bond
spending one of those on a doctor and supposedly it was a large
denomination.
A guinea is 21 shillings.
A crown was 5 shillings
A half-crown was 2/6 (two-and-six)
A florin was two shillings.
A tanner was a sixpence.
Right, I remember a little now, how a guinea was one pound one shilling.
Rather, it was 21 shillings because it could be divided into three sets
of seven, iirc what I once knew.
Wasn't there a three-pence and two-pence coin? I have "thruppence" and
"tuppence" on my tongue for some reason. I bet the reason the 20-pence
coin is non-round is because the florin or whatever, was also not round.

There was a thruppenny bit, which had angles. The florin was round.

And I recall a Hapenny bridge in Dublin because the toll was once a
half-penny. I wonder if there were other sub-penny divisions.

There were ha'pennies (half pennies), and farthings (quarter pennies).

I seem to recall a super-pound coin, too, a sovereign? Right? Was that
the only super-pound coin (other than a guinea, technically).

I don't know what you mean by 'super pound'. The sovereign was worth 20
shillings.

All the harkens to a time when a pound was a LOT of money. Even in a
film just 40 years ago, from watching one of those George Smiley films
with the title character portrayed by Obi Wan Kenobi, there was an issue
made about an informant and a 'large sum' of something like 6 pounds
being referenced.

My first flat, two rooms in the West End of Edinburgh, cost GBP 6 per
month. That was in the 1960s.

US and UK measure system are comparatively quite simple compared to the
situation that prevailed in continental Europe at the same time.

That's why the metric system has been in use for some 200 years now.
Where's your point?

That continental Europe needed reform 200 years ago, and the United
Kingdom and the United States did not?

The problem on continental Europe was that the different units made if
hard to trade with your neighbours. That was a matter of
standardization, not a question on how complex the units were.

In the UK this had been done, sort of, centuries earlier. For this
matter, it's obviously an advantage to sit alone on an island with just
one king, more or less.
And the US simply imported the units from the UK.