

English Units of Measure - AdamN
http://hypertextbook.com/physics/foundations/system-english/
Really awesome primer on the English system of measurement and its history.
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robin_reala
Of course, the title should be 'Old english units of measure'. England started
officially becoming metric in 1965 (with a few exceptions like road signs and
pints of beer).

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halo
Confusingly, the US system commonly referred as "English units" differs from
the traditional English Imperial unit used before metrication in several key
ways - the most notable difference being the US units of liquid volume being
notably smaller than their Imperial counterparts.

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robin_reala
Oh, the US refers to it as English Units does it? That explains a lot. In the
UK one talks about the two systems as being Metric and Imperial.

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RiderOfGiraffes
It's missing so much, like the know used to be defined at 42 fathoms per 30
seconds, giving 5040 ft per hour, which was close to the original definition
of the mile. Then when the nautical mile was more useful it became 47'3" in 28
seconds, which equates to 6075 ft/hr, which is pretty close to the idea of 1
NM/hr.

There's more, but it's pretty good. A fun read.

Challenge question, a snail's pace is a furlong/fortnight. How fast is that in
SI units?

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spatulon
[http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=1+furlong+per+fortnight+in+...](http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=1+furlong+per+fortnight+in+m/s)

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pavel_lishin
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it.

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gecko
That works out to 0.00198412698 miles per gallon. I hope Homer left out a
couple of zeros--but then again, given the car he built, my hope is likely
misplaced.

