On 2007 06 1 3:56 AM, "Scott Hudnall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Brij: > > There is supposed to be symbolism involved in choosing the height of the tower > - but it is lost on 95% of the world, since they do not understand feet. > > The number 1776 is supposed to symbolize freedom, since it is the year the US > gained independence from England. I don't think the designers had promoting > the use of SI in mind when they chose this height. Dear Scott, Brij, and All, Symbols can be useful for a long time. You may be interested in a question and answer that was published in the London Daily Mail on May 23 that went something like this (I haven't seen the published article but I have had feedback from it). Question: Why is Trafalgar Square - constructed to commemorate victory over the French - laid out to metric rather than Imperial dimensions? Answer: I am indebted to Pat Naughtin of http://www.metricationmatters.com.html <http://www.metricationmatters.com.html> for his help with this answer. Pat writes: The use of metric units to design and to build Trafalgar Square makes sense when you put it into its historical context. When the Houses of Parliament in London burnt down, in 1834, the physical standards for the Imperial yard, the Imperial pound, and the Imperial gallon were all destroyed. A great debate then ensued about the merits of introducing the metric system into Britain because, by 1834, the metric system had already demonstrated its superiority in several countries. By the late 1830s the metric system had many English supporters and these included the English architect Charles Barry, who was born in London in 1795 and died there, as Sir Charles Barry, in 1860. Barry was apprenticed to a firm of surveyors before training as an architect in Italy from 1817 to 1820. He was influenced by the architects of the Italian Renaissance and was greatly impressed by the simplicity of building with metric units. When Barry returned to England he designed the Travellers Club, the House of Commons and the House of Lords (with Augustus Welby Pugin), the Athenaeum in Manchester, Trafalgar Square, the Cabinet Office, and the Reform Club. As I understand it, Charles Barry designed Trafalgar Square, in 1840, to be exactly 100 metres long by 100 metres wide and to have a 5 metre wide roadway along all four sides. This made it exactly 110 metres by 110 metres from the building lines. (When I decided to check this, I used GoogleEarth to look at an image of Trafalgar Square from a height of 150 metres. However, I don¹t yet know how to use Google Earth¹s measuring tools, so I measured the length of a London bus and used that as my scale. Knowing that a London bus is exactly 9.144 metres, I estimated that 12 bus lengths would fit across Trafalgar Square so its width must be 12 London bus lengths x 9.144 metres = 109.728 metres and this looks to me a lot like a 100 metre square with an allowance for a 5 metre roadway on each side.) Among the other interesting metric facts in this part of London are that the Parliamentary Clock in the Westminster Tower is exactly 50 metres above the ground (the bell in this tower is called Big Ben¹) and that Nelson¹s Column is also exactly 50 metres to the platform on which the statue of Nelson stands. By the way, Pat Naughtin will be in London on July 14 this year to speak at the Annual General Meeting of the United Kingdom Metric Association. You can obtain details of this meeting from the UKMA Secretary, Derek Pollard, at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or by phoning 020 8374 6997 Cheers, Pat Naughtin PO Box 305, Belmont, 3216 Geelong, Australia Phone 61 3 5241 2008 Pat Naughtin is the editor of the free online monthly newsletter, 'Metrication matters'. Subscribe at http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter Pat is recognised as a Lifetime Certified Advanced Metrication Specialist (LCAMS) with the United States Metric Association. He is also editor of the 'Numbers and measurement' section of the Australian Government Publishing Service 'Style manual for writers, editors and printers'. He is a Member of the National Speakers Association of Australia and the International Federation for Professional Speakers. See: http://www.metricationmatters.com This email and its attachments are for the sole use of the addressee and may contain information that is confidential and/or legally privileged. This email and its attachments are subject to copyright and should not be partly or wholly reproduced without the consent of the copyright owner. Any unauthorised use of disclosure of this email or its attachments is prohibited. If you receive this email in error, please immediately delete it from your system and notify the sender by return email.
