fitzcoraldo
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the pulse
Mar 01, 2006, 01:06
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Lentil
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jimit
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Re: You are the cool ruler
Mar 01, 2006, 10:02
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Gather round children.....When yer Uncle Jim first started work he was employed by a Quantity Surveying firm and had to work out various areas in buildings for pricing. He used a marvelous mechanical machine called a Brunsvega with a handle on the side and lots of little pegs for the various numbers, rotate the handle and the answer came up, all in duo decimals. More complicated calculations were done on a contometer, a machine with loads of buttons on top,did his head in.
Thank the gods for Metric, it ain't rocket science. All car spedos are marked in Miles and Km so that shouldn't be a problem.
Jim.
P.S. Isn't it nice when a thread goes so deliciously off topic? All this talk about old rocks can be soooo boring.
;-)
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wolfnighthunter
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Re: You are the cool ruler
Mar 01, 2006, 10:09
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ik hoop het geen ernstig probleem met de linzen is?
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wolfnighthunter
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Re: the pulse
Mar 01, 2006, 10:17
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Ik denk zal gaan dumtroddan zal doen sommige schoten van de rotskunst in de nachttijd...
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StoneLifter
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Re: You are the cool ruler
Mar 01, 2006, 10:44
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No, it's certainly 14.5 inches, the way of throwing these platters is alluded to in the measure. I'll have a look about and see if I can find some supporting (digital) evidence.
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StoneLifter
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Re: You are the cool ruler
Mar 01, 2006, 11:53
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Oops, no, it's certainly not 14.5 inches - see here - http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-ell1.htm . 45 inches by Order of Parliament. I wonder what my plate size is actually called. We used to measure drystone walls, for the Ministry, in yards - paced out. When they became DEFRA and changed to metres we continued to pace out the lengths, but called them metres. An officer came out with a tape measure last May and has rearranged things somewhat. We'd been overpaid but, as it's such a useless rate of grant anyway, there wasn't too much to pay back. The value of two deluxe memory men (2 x DMM), roughly.
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hamish
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Re: You are the cool ruler
Mar 01, 2006, 20:58
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Look at the bottom left pic on this site for the Scottish Ell measure.
http://www.doughoughton.com/webpage/page/page091.html
H
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FourWinds
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Re: You are the cool ruler
Mar 01, 2006, 21:09
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Have you ever been tempted to walk up to it, point and shout "What the 'ell is that?" ?
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BigSweetie
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Re: You are the cool ruler
Mar 02, 2006, 10:07
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no, but I've driven past it many times and wondered "What the 'ell is that?" ;)
I always assumed it was for toasting marshmallows
Cheers
Andy
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hamish
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Re: You are the cool ruler
Mar 02, 2006, 10:12
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I don't think I would have been the first.
H
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