Why still miles?
in [UK Drivers]
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From: Adrian on 20 Jul 2010 15:39 "Knight of the Road" <nospam(a)nospam.com> gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying: > A mile is a far better measurement of length Would that be a statute mile (1609.344m), a survey mile (1609.3472m) or a nautical mile (1,852m)? Then, of course, there was the Scottish mile (which varied in length across Scotland), the Irish mile (Usually 4 = 5 English miles (but which English mile?)) Or, p'raps, the Elizabethan mile? (about 1524m) > a thousand paces of a Roman soldier, something we can all visualise. Oh, the ROMAN mile. All 1479m of it. > A metre is an artificially contrived measurement, one ten-millionth of > the distance between the equator and the North Pole. And, of course, the nautical mile isn't in any way "artificially contrived" as 1 minute of arc along one of the Earth's meridians? Still, at least it's "fairly consistent", as the Earth doesn't change in shape or size. Much. ALL units of measurement are arbitrary. Always have been, always will be. The year and the day are about the only ones which derive directly from nature - and they're not _that_ precise. (Feb 29?)
From: Knight of the Road on 20 Jul 2010 17:01 "Adrian" <toomany2cvs(a)gmail.com> wrote in message news:8amcbiFdfqU14(a)mid.individual.net... > "Knight of the Road" <nospam(a)nospam.com> gurgled happily, sounding much > like they were saying: > >> A mile is a far better measurement of length > > Would that be a statute mile (1609.344m), a survey mile (1609.3472m) As we are talking about Imperial measurements here, could you express the difference between those two figures in feet and inches?
From: Adrian on 20 Jul 2010 17:07 "Knight of the Road" <nospam(a)nospam.com> gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying: >>> A mile is a far better measurement of length >> Would that be a statute mile (1609.344m), a survey mile (1609.3472m) > As we are talking about Imperial measurements here, could you express > the difference between those two figures in feet and inches? Start -> Run -> Calc
From: alan.holmes on 20 Jul 2010 17:34 Why not, we have had miles for hundreds of years why the hell would we want to give then up? We should not have abandoned any of our traditional measurements at all! Alan "NKTB" <north_korean_tourist_board(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message news:ff49cbf5-8f43-4cac-876e-d305ad586cff(a)l14g2000yql.googlegroups.com... > From watching various TV traffic cops type shows from various parts of > the Commonwealth, I notice that they all now use kilometres for > distances, and obviously kph for speed (and presumably km/Litre for > fuel consumption hopefully not the dreadful Litres/100km used on the > continent. > > I know the British people are a bit stick-in-the-mud, and don't like > all these nasty foreign weights and measures, but British people, > albeit in foreign parts (Aussies, Canucks, Enzedders etc) seem to have > happily adopted these measures, no doubt with some resistance from the > elder and more conservative of their number. The Irish, who are > probably our closest neighbours culturally now, have long since gone > metric. > > OK, we still buy milk in pints (multiples of 568ml), some food in > pounds (multiples of 454gm) but we are, to all intents and purposes, > fully metricated in the food area. We have for a long time used > celsius temperatures, and anyone who works in science or engineering, > as I do, will have used metric (MKS) units since I don't know when. > > Are the PTB scared of an almighty backlash if we go the final mile > (pun intended) and chuck the antiquated measurement into the long > grass? It would seem so. Is it just the expense of changing all > those road signs - I guess the current economic climate won't help. > > How long can we go on having a hybrid, half-arsed system of distance > measurement? At least the yanks have kept all the other imperial > measures. I'm thinking that KPH is a just a change too far. > > > > > >
From: Mortimer on 20 Jul 2010 18:40
"alan.holmes" <alan.holmes27(a)somewhere.net> wrote in message news:zDo1o.316649$NW.163870(a)hurricane... > > Why not, we have had miles for hundreds of years why the hell would we > want to give then up? > > We should not have abandoned any of our traditional measurements at all! Even though our cack-handed units, where the relationship between one and another is an obscure number, never base 10, makes calculation a nightmare, and even though there isn't an easy relationship between linear and cubic units (277.something cubic inches in a gallon). The imperial system has all the faults of a system that has evolved and has had bits cobbled onto it piecemeal, with arcane units which are used only in one particular trade, and where units of the same name (eg ounce) have different values in different trades. The SI system, in contrast, was designed rather than evolving and so has sensible relationships between linear, area, volume and mass (assuming that you are measuring the mass of a unit volume of water, the commonest liquid on the planet). For me, those considerations outweigh the disadvantages (and I'll freely admit that they are disadvantages) of some units not being human-sized and base 10 not allowing integer division into 3 or 4 equal parts. It's a shame that we don't have 12 digits (as in fingers/thumbs), otherwise we'd count in base 12 and have the advantages of both systems ;-) I'm fiercely patriotic to England and wouldn't want to surrender anything to Europe or adopt their standards in preference to ours - with the single exception of the SI system. |