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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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 Posted -
11/01/2009
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06:04
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New Year, new topic. If you want to see the old one do a forum search for same title but 2008.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk
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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 07/02/2009 : 05:25
Bonhams will today sell a type 57S Bugatti which was bought by an aristocrat, sold on after 8 years to an orthopaedic surgeon in NE Englahd who put it in his garage under a dust sheet. It sat there for over 50 years and was discovered when he died a couple of years ago. It is virtually all original and could fetch about £3,000,000.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk  |
Tizer
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Posted - 08/02/2009 : 12:30
I'd like to climb up and use my felt tip pen to change `responsible' to `irresponsible'!
Portia, the worst people for using metric units badly are all those who use millimetres when giving the size of things like cars or lengths of timber. The timber people will label a 6ft length as 1800 mm when they should say 1.8 metres. The car brochures are worse because they will give the length as something like 4297 mm as if anyone cares about the difference between 4297 and 4298 mm for their car (4.3 metres would be fine). When measuring we should always use the appropriate unit but perhaps this isn't taught in school now. Also, they often give measurements to accuracies that are impossible or unrealistic to measure with the tools they have.
If we learnt metric properly we would also use the decimetre, a tenth of a metre. The car above would then be 43 dm long - simple and clear! It sounds strange to us, but if we started out with those measurements at school it would be easy.
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thomo
Barlick Born Old Salt
2021 Posts
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Posted - 08/02/2009 : 12:52
Many years ago the decametre, decimetre etc became redundant. The milimetre has been the standard unit of measurement in most industries for a long time, it is quite simple and there is no point in clogging it up with excess terminology.
thomo |
Julie in Norfolk
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Posted - 08/02/2009 : 13:40
I can cope with what 5mm looks like, but i do have to think about what 5000mm looks like, I'm with Tizer on this one - ignoring the decimeter as a unit in its own right. Express as metres, cm, mm depending on the overall size of the unit. That is what the system is there for.
No-one would ever (normally) describe themselves as 73 inches tall, they would be 6ft 1in.
Our atlantic cousins are no better at guessing weight than us, just because they express it in lbs.
Short and slim - 100 lbs - approx 7 stone
Short and tubby - 150 lbs - approx 10 stone 7lbs
Short and fat - 200 lbs - approx 14 stone
Medium and slim - 150 lbs
Medium and tubby - 200 lbs
medium and fat 250 lbs - 17 stone 7 lbs
etc etc.
Measure with a micrometer.
Mark with a pencil.
Cut with an axe. |
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 08/02/2009 : 14:52
In America they still use the Whitworth thread... How sensible.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
Gugger
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Posted - 08/02/2009 : 20:32
I guess I did learn the metric system properly.
In engineering measurements are given in mm. i.e 2475mm
In the building industry it is mostly in m and cm, i.e. 2.475 m or 2m 47.5 cm.
Decimetres is rarely used.
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Bodger
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Posted - 08/02/2009 : 20:44
Stanley, i though tat USA used a similar thread to Whitworth, ie. same pitch, but the thread angle is 60 deg. with a flat top on the apex while Whitworth is 55deg. with a radius on the top ?
"You can only make as well as you can measure"
Joseph Whitworth
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Bodger
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Posted - 08/02/2009 : 21:18
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2002/05/27/560777.htm?site=science/greatmomentsinscience
link to William Sellers, speech in 1864 regarding thread standardization
"You can only make as well as you can measure"
Joseph Whitworth
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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 09/02/2009 : 05:55
Don't get me going on thread forms and decimals. I use Whitworth, BSF and BA unless I'm forced to go metric in a repair. As for decimals, try dividing 360 by 127 and watch your result go beserk. Don't need to do that? You've never cut a 127 tooth gear..... Divide 1 by 3, then multiply the result by 3. Modern calculators will give you 1 as the answer when it should be .9 recurring. Not accurate...... Vulgar fractions are dead accurate and that means you can use them to set gear trains up easily to cut obscure threads. One third of an inch is precise. .3 recurring isn't. I shall shut up.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 09/02/2009 : 06:23
The Synod of the CofE meets today and the main business is discussing women bishops... Was there ever a more useless, puerile argument? It's not theology it's fear of women. Is it any wonder that people reject organised religion when they see this sort of thinking. Watched most of Ann Widdecombe on the Reformation last night. Terribly flawed presentation that avoided legitimate criticism of the Roman church and completely ignored the real roots, she's got the Dissolution wrong as well and completely ignored Wycliffe and the early Dissenters. A flawed programme because she thinks that Luther started the Reformation. She should get better historical advisers.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
Tizer
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Posted - 09/02/2009 : 11:23
Thomo, decametre isn't used much because it isn't much needed. But decimetre isn't redundant - it's just not used by ordinary folk because they aren't told about it. Scientists use it frequently. A cubic decimetre of water is equal to one litre but the units are not interchangeable. Litre is a unit of capacity whereas dm cubed is a unit of volume.
Julie is quite right that we should be able to visualise dimensions. The use of measurements to one millimetre accuracy and expressed solely in millimetres when describing long distances (the four hundred and ninety-seven millimetre long car) may be OK for engineers working on something at great accuracy but it's ludicrous for car brochures or for selling rough sawn timber.
I'm not talking some New Age idea here. Workmen have always in the past been trained to use the right units and that's why we had all those funny named units in the Imperial system. And it's why the metric system was given all those prefixes. One of the first thing scientists are taught is to use the appropriate unit when measuring or expressing measurments. And the base measurement of the ISO Metric System is the metre, not the millimetre, so why sell timber in millimetres?
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thomo
Barlick Born Old Salt
2021 Posts
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Posted - 09/02/2009 : 12:50
I understood that the whole idea of going metric was to simplify measurement and get rid of the peripherals. I was brought up with the Imperial System and it always worked well for me. However, After the changeover I did a two year engineering course and at that time the Navy, due to the age of some of the ships had to employ both systems in tandem. The first phase of training involved producing ten test pieces, all made by hand. No 1 was Imperial, No2 Metric, No3 was Metric with Imperial drawings and Metric Micrometer, No 4 was an Imperial job with Imperial Micrometer and Metric drawings. Marks were awarded for each job with a bonus for accuracy and for undercutting the time allowed, if the trainee got over 75% he could keep the test pieces. I got 98.2% and still have my lumps of steel and brass. In mainstream engineering the Millimetre has long been the accepted unit of measurement and the Metre does not appear until greater lengths are involved, timber producers and the construction industry in general use the same system without any problems, There is no need to muddy the waters with further units of subdivision. My last full time employment was building high quality craft for the inland waterways system, these are still described in terms of feet and the materials in Millimetres and Metres and I doubt that this will ever change.
thomo |
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 10/02/2009 : 07:27
I still remember the exercise books we had at school which traditionally had a complete table of Imperial measurements on the back. One very important factor was the linkage between different measurements like 20cwt and twenty shillings. All aimed at making mental arithmetic easy.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 10/02/2009 : 07:47
This pic of Alan Parker. We used to drive together on the tankers at West Marton. Saw him yesterday having a smoke outside the bookies.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
belle
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Posted - 10/02/2009 : 15:49
What grabbed my attention today was the radio report that the leaders of the big banks were being taken to task for their part in the problems, and had said sorry (WHAT!!!!???? Is that it?) but even more horrific was the information that "None of them had banking qualifications!"
I am puce!
Life is what you make it |
SPEAKER'S CORNER 2012
