Rockrich
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Re: You are the cool ruler
Feb 28, 2006, 17:17
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would be an improvement on my current abode, I can tell yer!
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StoneLifter
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Re: You are the cool ruler
Feb 28, 2006, 17:29
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Isn't an Ell 14 1/2 inches ? Elbow to base of bent palm - they used to throw plates this big (potters). I've still got a chain - it can be used for marking out a cricket pitch.
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Littlestone
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Re: You are the cool ruler
Feb 28, 2006, 17:37
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The solution to all this is very simple - we keep the mile, foot, pint, pound etc (measurements in the main relating to the human body which we're all very happy with thank you) but divide them by ten - ten inches to the foot not twelve etc etc. We then have a 'metric' system linked to a <i>meaningful</i> system of measurement.
This is a fascinating subject and I'm on the verge of talking about the mo... but might need a mo or two more to finish the bottle of Aspall's organic Suffolk cyder (est. 1728) that I've just cracked open :-)
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FourWinds
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Re: You are the cool ruler
Feb 28, 2006, 17:55
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>> .i mean think of the cost of changing, the road signs for example
Ireland recently changed its speed limits to Km/h at great expense. Before that we had the mad situation where the speed limits were in mph and distances in kms, so it's a little different here.
A note on decimals. Mathematically they suck. It's easy to display a number such as 100 and know it's bigger that 74, but the same goes for base 16 once you know it - A7 is bigger than 72.
Base 10 is crap for dividing up. 10 has 2 & 5 as factors. 12 has 2,3,4,6 as factors and so is easier to divide up into smaller parts with fractions. Likewise 16 has 2,4,8 not as good as 12, but better that 10.
The Babylonians used base 60 and we get the division of the hour and circle from them, but like the Greeks and Romans they had no zero. This meant you could not write down 10 and 100 and know the difference using the same digits. That's why the Romans had so many symbols for the base ten stages 1, 10, 100 & 1000 rather than being able to represent them as we do.
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Vybik Jon
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Re: You are the cool ruler
Feb 28, 2006, 18:11
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All of that should have had a smily thing, but I'm crap at them too.
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PeterH
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Re: You are the cool ruler
Feb 28, 2006, 18:22
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Pity the Roman schoolboys. Try multiplying XIV by L and then dividing by X Those clever Arabs gave us the big 0
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PeterH
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Re: You are the cool ruler
Feb 28, 2006, 18:26
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That's what I thought, but my dictionary says its 45 inches. Then it says its the length of the forearm - which is daft unless you are gibbon. Could it be the distance between both elbows when arms are outstretched?
Perhaps those metric thingies do make more sense after all.
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Littlestone
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Re: You are the cool ruler
Feb 28, 2006, 18:32
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Actually, the earliest record of 0 is on a Hindu temple - can't remember exactly where or when it was written but it was on TV recently so it must be true.
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Wiggy
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Re: You are the cool ruler
Feb 28, 2006, 20:18
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Haven't read the whole thread........, but I thought it was the Romans...(?)
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fitzcoraldo
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Re: You are the cool ruler
Mar 01, 2006, 01:02
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Objektive ist wirklich eine Linse. Dieses konnte ernste Probleme verursachen, als, eine opthamologists Prüfung durchmachend,
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