

The Meter: The Measure of a Man - __Joker
http://www.radiolab.org/story/meter-measure-man/

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kephra
An interesting point is that the meter is off by 0.2%. Not bad you might
think, but compare it to the Summerian Kù of 51.85cm of the copper of Nippur
and its derived unit SAR of 3600 Kù being 1866.6 meter being only 0.77% off
from an arc second of the meridian.

Those ancient scientist did know the square root of 2 and PI by 4 sexagesimal
figures. Thats better then IEEE floating point single precision! They did
calculate the size of the earth being only 0.77% off the real value.

All this wisdom was lost 333BC, when Alexander destroyed civilization,
installed femicide and women segreation, that is still cursing middle eat.
Later the Greeks claimed parts of recovered ancient math as their own. So we
now know the names of Greek copycats like Pythagoras, but not the names of
those who really discovered this wisdom.

It had been most likely a female name, because reading, writing, math had been
typical women skills at that time.

~~~
err4nt
As an artist, and armchair historian I would LOVE to hear more. I don't
require cheque out sources even, I just want to hear more. Mesopotamian
history is my favorite period.

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seszett
By the way, a really interesting documentary on the expedition (and Méchain's
error) exists, though maybe not in English. It's been aired on Arte (and
probably ZDF in Germany):

In French: [http://www.arte.tv/guide/fr/041693-004/un-metre-pour-
mesurer...](http://www.arte.tv/guide/fr/041693-004/un-metre-pour-mesurer-le-
monde) /
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y77kLA1eC0M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y77kLA1eC0M)

And in German:
[http://www.arte.tv/guide/de/041693-004/terra-x](http://www.arte.tv/guide/de/041693-004/terra-x)
/
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoMvzVLiL94](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoMvzVLiL94)

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rtpg
Slightly off topic, but I have a coworker who is not as much of a fan of the
metric system as others I know.

His main issue was that the metric system is based off of things heavily
linked to our planet (like involving water at atmospheric pressure). How hard
would it be to reproduce the metric measurements on the moon, for example?

~~~
arrrg
Except for the kilogram (which still is an actual sphere in a vault in Paris
somewhere, but hopefully not for long) all base units are defined so that they
don’t require the context of Earth or a specific object or anything like that.

A meter, for example, is defined as “the length of the path travelled by light
in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second”.

~~~
ubernostrum
They are defined that way _now_ , yes. But those are retrofitted universal-
constant definitions chosen for their equivalence to the arbitrary things-on-
earth definitions originally used. There is nothing intuitive or natural or
universal about 1/299792458, for example, to suggest it as a good basis for a
unit of distance, other than "that's really close to the original arbitrary
length of the meter".

~~~
boomlinde
Yes, but that criticism was not the basis of the argument he responded to,
which he perfectly addressed. Try to think of a way to define a unit of
measurement that isn't either volatile or completely arbitrary.

Besides, I think that the really useful part of the metric system is that the
metric prefixes intuitively make sense when expressed in decimal, and it's
clearly expressed from, say, 100143.796 meters, how many millimeters,
centimeters, decimeters, meters and kilometers it is. You could say the same
thing about inches, feet, yards and miles, but usually I see a combination of
those units of varying ratios rather than kiloyards or megainches.

~~~
ubernostrum
And yet base 10 is pretty arbitrary. It's not just tied to human anatomy, it's
tied to a particular non-universal way of interpreting human anatomy.

Granted, I don't really care much one way or the other -- I think metric is
more useful for scientific/mathematical/engineering/etc. applications and some
of the old imperial units are more useful for things like cooking, and tend to
recommend people use whatever's most practical for their task -- but it's hard
to escape the impression that metric is an arbitrary system trying to retrofit
claims of non-arbitrariness.

~~~
boomlinde
_> And yet base 10 is pretty arbitrary._

I think that you are missing my point. I'm saying that not being arbitrary is
too much to ask for from a practically useful system of measure, but what the
metric system has going for it is that it is at least consistent with itself.

 _> but it's hard to escape the impression that metric is an arbitrary system
trying to retrofit claims of non-arbitrariness._

I'd like to see any of these claims of non-arbitrariness. I have managed to
escape them. The point of redefining the unit in terms of some universal
constant is not to avoid arbitrariness but to avoid the inherent volatility of
defining it in terms of something which is not constant and not easily
reproducible outside earth. No one is arguing that 1/29979245 isn't a
completely arbitrary number.

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awor
The CBC posted a piece they did in 1982 when Canada was switching to the
metric system.

It's a really neat piece, lots of strong opinions on both sides.

[http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categories/science-
technology/mea...](http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categories/science-
technology/measurement/for-good-measure-canada-converts-to-metric/metric-
rebellion.html)

~10min long

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analog31
Worth noting that we're really meter-based in the US too. The legal inch is a
defined quantity based on the meter. Many modern measuring devices such as the
position encoders on machine tools use "whatever" units internally, that are
converted by software to inches or mm for display.

(Written after looking for a #29 drill for tapping #8-32 threads for an
electrical terminal fitting 14 gauge wire.)

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Htsthbjig
Well, the earth is not a sphere, so not a huge problem.

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transfire
Any good carpenter knows metric sucks.

~~~
forgotpasswd3x
Why?

~~~
transfire
[http://www.theenglishwoodworker.com/?p=1250](http://www.theenglishwoodworker.com/?p=1250)

~~~
nitrogen
_" Dividing a metre in to ten like this is much more helpful when measuring
long distances than seeing hundreds and hundreds of centimetres but this unit
doesn’t really exist with its own name."_

Actually, it does, it's called the decimeter.

The other complaints in that post sound like faults in the design of measuring
tapes, rather than faults in the meter itself. IMO, the _best_ argument in
favor of the imperial system is that you get more prime factors, so e.g. feet
can be easily divided into 2, 3, 4, or 6 equal parts without using fractions.
This is less important when one has access to decimal calculators.

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grumblepeet
Sigh...[http://grammarist.com/spelling/meter-
metre/](http://grammarist.com/spelling/meter-metre/)

~~~
forgotpasswd3x
Radiolab is an American show. There's no problem with the spelling.

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vixin
Sociologist Hector Vera has called the metric system “more popular than
Jesus.”. I'd rather not have my name associated with such a crass comment.

