Hi, There's an interesting book called The Measure of All Things which covers the quest for determining the length of the meter for the purpose of creating the ultimate scientifically based system of measurements called the metric system. The author also presents, intentionally or otherwise, additional themes in the book about the migration from what he refers to as savants into what we now call scientists and about some of the pitfalls of bureaucracies and government back 'science'. It's a book that is interesting to read and quite insightful, bordering on being as interesting as the book Longitude which I consider should be a must read for anyone interested in science and technology, especially as a career.
One of the observations made in the book was that there are several criteria for a system of measurements. These include practical values for common use and ease of use for the end user and ease of calibration or determination of the validity of the measurement tools. Beyond that, it really doesn't matter. Some things are more convenient to do metric, some are not. Fortunately, only a subset of the original metric system was implemented. We don't have 10 hour days and ten day weeks or 400 degrees in a circle. I'm not sure many could tolerate only 7 more days until the weekend. While there is the claim that the metric system is based upon things physical rather than something arbitrary, like the length of some dead king's foot, this claim is somewhat exagerated. What matters is the ease of reproducing the standard. The meter itself was an attempt to be defined as a particular fraction of the distance from pole to equator at the longitude of Paris, the assumption at the time was that the earth was a perfect sphere which it wasn't. Also, the ultimate accuracy of the measurement was off by several thousands of an inch. The claim of absolute reference to natural phenomenon become questionable when one asks why that fraction and why the meridian through Paris, accuracy aside. It's nice to use meters for wavelength because for us in the states,it's really more abstract than feet and inches and depending on the speed of propagation in the wire/coax, this distance in terms of wavelength can change significantly. As for adapting the metric system, I may use watts and occaisonally meters and grams when appropriate but I have no interest in changing it all for no real benefit. best regards, Charles _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
