Dear John, Euric, and All, I have interspersed some remarks.
on 22/2/04 6:03 AM, John S. Ward at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Euric, > > You're mixing up two very different things. Take the way the French use the > "livre," for example. I can go to a grocer and ask for meat or produce by > the livre. The unit pricing will be by the kilo. The grocer's scale will be > in grams or kg. My receipt will show the amount I bought in g or kg. Using > the term "livre" only made things simple and convenient for the customer, > which may be a good thing. It was verbal only, and no measuring devices > reference the traditional unit in any way. It's also relevant that the size > of a "livre" was standardized to 500 g about two centuries ago, and prior to > that was not standardized (if I recall correctly) so it made sense at that > time to adopt a standard value for the entire country. By 1790 France urgently needed to do something about its measures. Some of the units used in Paris could be traced back to the year 800 when Charlemagne had some standards made, but in the provinces, there was chaos. An English agricultural writer, Arthur Young, writing in the late 1780s said that the confusion 'exceeds all comprehension'. The astronomer, Jean Joseph Delambre, found the situation, 'astonishing and scandalous'. And the Bishop of Autun, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-P�rigord, (1754/1838) said that it terrified him to study the variety of weights and measures used by the French people. However he did gather data and presented it to the Constituent National Assembly of France on 1790 March 9. The information below is based on the data that Talleyrand presented. 24 different septiers: from 18.33 to 214.85 L 23 different boiseaux: from 2.54 to 102.3 L 15 different sacs: from 71.1 to 145.8 L 14 different aunes: from 676.3 to 1 347.2 mm 13 different pieds: from 270.7 to 341.8 mm 12 different livres: from 344.13 to 518.88 g 9 different tonneaux: from 242.1 to 1 944 L 9 different razi�res: from 71.1 to 143.95 L 6 different pots: from 0.94 to 2.26 L 5 different canes: from 792 to 2 011.3 mm 5 different barriques: from 174.3 to 238.05 L 3 different veltes: from 6.45 to 9.22 L 3 different queues: from 360.25 to 411.3 L 3 different quartauts; from 9.32 to 101.3 L 3 different muids: from 383.6 to 2 147 L 3 different mines: from 43.88 to 89.5 L 3 different emines: from 25.57 to 409.2 L 3 different charges: from 57.2 to 460.3 L 2 different cartes: 15.99 and 47.9 L 2 different bichets: 184.15 and 191.8 L 2 different barals: 25.33 and 37.3 L 2 different an�es: 25.57 and 191.8 L [The item relevant to this discussion was that there were 12 different livres, which ranged in size from from 344.13 grams to 518.88 grams.] > You are advocating that the measuring devices themselves use the name of the > traditional unit with a new value different from the current standard value. > Also, you have nominated yourself to decide for everyone else how much > precision they need for a particular unit. How would you like it if someone > decided for you that metric tapes should use 40 inch meters? After all, you > would probably never notice the difference anyway, right? > > John > > On Friday 20 February 2004 21:14, Chimpsarecute wrote: >> I disagree! >> >> There isn't a culture on earth in which the traditional unit names have not >> survived metrication. They have done so because people are attached to >> them and also because their have been redefined to rounded metric values to >> make them more harmonised with metric devices. Unit names have survived >> the times because they were never fixed to exact values but were allowed to >> change with the times and whims of the authorities of the times. In part, you are discussing here the two, contradictory ways that are used to 'define' words. Dictionary writers develop a consensus among themselves as to how a word is defined by studying the historical uses of any word or phrase. This method is encapsulated in the sub-title to the Oxford University Dictionary, which is: 'On Historical Principles'. Dictionary writers have no intentions about how a word might be used in the future; they describe how the word has been used in the past, that is, 'On Historical Principles' and they expect that the meanings of all words will change in the future in the same way that they have done in the past. Standards writers on the other hand write with the expectation that their definition can be used as a practical solution to all sorts of issues in design, construction, and trading. The definitions of the metre and the kilogram are excellent examples of this intention, and of this type of standards definition. Conflict often arises when users of historically based word descriptions believe that they are dealing with standards definitions. For example, to a standards person, metric system means 'based in some way on the definition of a metre. But to a dictionary writer metric is just another changeable word that can be studied in terms of the way it has been used in the past; in this way the word metrics, as applied to financial markets, simply means measurements -- any measurements. >> As a country or culture metricates, the devices change. When a device is >> calibrated in a metric unit it makes it difficult for someone who uses the >> old unit name to relate to the new metric sizes. Redefining old names to >> rounded metric values helps ease the transition. , it may seem to some the old system is still here, but it isn't. >> It is just the name that has survived. You say: ''When a pound is redefined as 500 g' when the historical reality is 'When a pound was first defined as 500 grams'; this was the first time ever that the livre had a 'standards definition', before that it had only the descriptions used 'On Historical Principles' essentially meaning that the livre could be defined (and redefined) according to whatever traders could get away with! >> If you don't make the change in value to the old names you will find a lot >> of resentment to the metric system. Because people will find it hard to >> work with the odd numbers of the old meanings and the devices that are >> calibrated strictly in SI units. People in Europe who may still use names >> like livre, pond, pfund, libre, etc. don't feel confused when they go to >> the market and see only a scale with a metric display. They know that when >> they ask for something by the old unit name, they can easily see what they >> are getting on a scale not calibrated in the old unit when the old name >> refers to a rounded number in metric. As I observe it, most of the early resentment to metrication was promoted by the traders who, some for the first time in historical memory, had to use standards based definitions instead of descriptions based 'On Historical Principles' or the multiple ways that it measuring had been done in the past. The practice of having two sets of weights and measures -- one for buying and one for selling -- goes back so far that various ancient religious works enjoin against it. Let me quote from 'Metrication matters 4'. 'Traders have always known that having a range of measures offers the best opportunities for cheating their clients. From earliest times, people who used false measures have been denounced by religious and government authorities. 'The Koran says: 'Woe to those who stint the measure. Who when they take by measure from others, exact the full, but diminish when they measure to others, or weigh to them'. 'The Jewish law in the book of Deuteronomy says: 'Thou shalt not have in thy bag diverse weights, a great and a small'. 'And the Old Testament uses measurement as a running theme: 'Shall I count them pure with the wicked balances, and with the bag of deceitful weights.' 'A false balance is an abomination to the Lord; but a just weight is his delight.' 'Diverse weights and diverse measures, both of them alike are an abomination to the Lord.' and, 'But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have, that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. 'The commonest way to cheat was, and still is, to use two sets of mass and volume measures, a large one for buying, and a small for selling. Many modern traders use the metric system to buy, and then sell using any old units that the public will accept.' >> I'm sure some will insist that leaving the old names as they are will >> facilitate their demise. I disagree. It will only breed bitterness and >> resentment towards metric. Because the old unit names have changed value >> and in most cases had varying values depending on location makes it easier >> and less drastic if these unit names change again. The old expression: 'A miss is as good as an ell' gradually changed to: A miss is as good as a mile' Largely for poetic reasons -- the alliteration is better -- Neither the ell nor the mile has a standard definition in this context. In a hundred years this might be replaced by something like: 'A millimetre miss is a kilometre miss'. >> I realise that the people of the US and UK think they are something special >> and that there is something special about their version of ancient unit >> names and for this reason it is unthinkable that they be altered, >> especially to conform with what some would consider the measurements of >> "inferior" nations. But they are not special and neither are their units. Of course they're special. As Margaret Mead put it: 'Never forget that you are totally unique -- just like everybody else'. >> I just wonder how much faster the kilogram would have been accepted if >> people were taught in the beginning to think of a pound as 500 g and giving >> the green light for shops to dole out 500 g amounts when a pound was >> requested. By this time, I believe the need to add pound pricing to ads >> would have vanished and people in Canada would be having a market >> experience similar to what is seen everywhere else. Keeping the old unit >> definitions with odd conversions to SI is one of main the reason Canada >> hasn't fully moved to SI and is stuck in the middle. I understand your conjecture here but I have observed that the transition to metric is fastest when there is no confusion produced by providing a comforting half-way house that is partly old and partly new. The best metric transition I ever saw was with a group of gas fitters. In one day they had all of their old rulers and tapes taken and destroyed; these were immediately replaced with metric-only rulers and tapes. Metric conversion in that industry took the rest of that week. There was no conversion between the old and the new -- one day they were working in imperial units and the next they were working in metric units, specifically millimetres. I cannot know how long this transition might have taken if they were told the inches were really 25 millimetres, but I suspect that 100 years might be a fair guess. >> Euric >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: "John S. Ward" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> Sent: Friday, 2004-02-20 22:42 >> Subject: [USMA:28834] Let's not go backwards! >> >>> A common theme on this list is to redefine traditional units to new >> >> metricated >> >>> sizes, like the messages in current thread advocating redefining cups to >> >> 250 I will comment on cups in another posting. <snip> Cheers, Pat Naughtin LCAMS Geelong, Australia Pat Naughtin is the editor of the free online newsletter, 'Metrication matters'. You can subscribe by sending an email containing the words subscribe Metrication matters to [EMAIL PROTECTED] --
