I suppose that bbl came into use for barrel to distinguish it from bl
for bale.
Jim
Bill Potts wrote:
I do indeed have the magazine, Norm. Thanks for pointing that out,
though, as I don't always read Time from cover to cover and would have
missed that one.
One thing that article and another one one page 53 remind me about is
that fact that I've always found the use of bbl as the abbreviation or
symbol for barrel very annoying. It looks more like an abbreviation of
bubble -- which may, in fact, be more appropriate these days.
Bill
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
*On Behalf Of *Norman & Nancy Werling
*Sent:* Wednesday, June 11, 2008 09:56
*To:* U.S. Metric Association
*Subject:* [USMA:41052] Time magazine, June 16, 2008, page 20, "A
Brief History of:The Oil Barrel"
If you have the magazine, I commend the subject article for your
reading. It was the old whisky barrel that became the measure of
crude oil in the United States. The article explains that Japan
measures crude oil in kiloliters and Russia measures it in metric
tons (tonnes).
An excerpt includes this, "1866--Oil companies agree to standard
barrel size, 42 gal. (160 L) for tax purposes." In a posting I made
about two weeks ago, I mentioned that Time includes SI-metric terms
within parentheses with usually reasonable approximations.
In this case, the exact calculation would have been 158.9872956
L (3.7854118 times 42) which would have been ridiculous if shown to
such a degree of accuracy. It would have been negative toward
promoting acceptance of SI-metric.
Norm Werling
--
James R. Frysinger
632 Stony Point Mountain Road
Doyle, TN 38559-3030
(H) 931.657.3107
(C) 931.212.0267
