I've travelled the world and observed that many countries (South Africa, Kenya, Australia, UK) have adopted the millimeter as the unit of choice for building construction, If written with a space every 3 digits (as in 1 000 000 mm) it's very easy to see that this is 1000 meters, plus it gets rid of the decimal point so common with centimeters. Anyone looking at a plan for say a building (or home) can quite easily convert between meters for comprehension and millimeters for the plan. It's not necessary that the plan be accurate to one millimeter, at this scale it might be rounded to the nearest centimeter (1 234 560) by rounding out to the nearest 10 millimeters. At home on my numerous DIY projects, I'll often measure something as (say) 149 and write it down as 1490, (the former cm, the latter mm) this is what makes the metric system easy to work with, I can use m, cm or mm as necessary, converting back and forth at will when necessary for simplicity or calculation, but the plan is still all in one unit with no decimal place, it would be unusual to dimension something like this to less than one millimeter.
-- Michael Payne --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- EarthLink: The #1 provider of the Real Internet. > [Original Message] > From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: U.S. Metric Association <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: 15/11/03 16:04:36 > Subject: [USMA:27587] Re: List Lurker thoughts on cm > > I am still struggling with how to properly interpret this observed pattern and more importantly how to deduce the underlying dynamic to see how it can be used to guide policy and suggestions in the continued conversion of the UK, Canada, and the US. > > Thoughts, anyone?? > > Ezra -
