<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Nov 10, 2020, at 12:20 PM, Ingo Debus <<a href="mailto:igg.debus@gmail.com" class="">igg.debus@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><div class=""><br class="">Sorry, this is getting way OT, but I just have to rant.<br class=""><br class="">Recently I bought the book „Musical Mathematics“ by Cris Forster. Everything is done with imperial units there. No problem, I first thought, but soon it dawned on me where the problem is: prefixes like kilo, milli etc don’t exist. As an instrument builder, the author preferred to use inches rather than feet.</div></blockquote><br class=""></div><div><br class=""></div><div>'Quick question; how old are you? In MegaSeconds.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>(And if you have to do a computation to answer, you violate the primary advantage of the metric system.)</div><div><br class=""></div><div><br class=""></div><div>---</div><div><br class=""></div><div><br class=""></div><div>As a guy with a heavy science and engineering background, everyone assumes that I would be an advocate for the Metric System. But I'm not.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>I'm writing an article that presents my views on this topic called "Metric System Considered Harmful". It keeps growing.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>Of course I recognize and appreciate the advantages of the metric system. It's great for scientific work. But for everything else; engineering, design, culture, regular life... the metric system becomes a serious disadvantage.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>Song lyrics? Poetry? Idioms? Oh man, forget it; it's embarrassing.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>Construction practices, tiles, 2x4's, plumbing, wire gauges...</div><div><br class=""></div><div>Electronics, connectors, IC packages, rack "u" units...</div><div><br class=""></div><div>Organ pipes, keyboard dimensions, string gauges...</div><div><br class=""></div><div>And if you think about it and dive deeper, it brings up some very interesting issues: What do we want from our systems of measurement? What is the relationship between design and measurement units? Historically we see units of measurement created to optimize specific needs. That sounds like a good thing.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>Time is an especially insightful example. For scientific applications we use mSec, uSec, and nSec. But for human times we use days, weeks, years.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>---</div><div><br class=""></div><div>Addressing Ingo's point that I'm responding to; when you have application-specific units of measurement there is no need for prefixes like kilo and milli.</div><div><br class=""></div><div> -- Don</div><div class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Menlo; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;">--<br class="">Donald Tillman, Palo Alto, California<br class=""><a href="http://www.till.com" class="">http://www.till.com</a></div>
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