How to get the metric system reinvented

John Prigent wrote:Thanks, Poker! Actually I buy my milk in 2-pint bottles, with the metric equivalent marked on them for those that want it. And contrary to the myths about British beer-drinkers, I don't like beer. However, a British pint is 568 ml, a US liquid pint 476 ml, and a US dry pint 551 ml. Which one did you mean? I might as well pick your brains thoroughly and make a note for when we dig into one or other of our recipe books and find 'cups' specified!
Cheers
John

*headdesk* This is what I'm talking about! Think of how many half-liters we could have downed before getting our pints straight!

Somewhere, I have a conversion site bookmarked for cooking occasions. My wife gets an earful on them.

John Prigent wrote:Thanks, Poker! Actually I buy my milk in 2-pint bottles, with the metric equivalent marked on them for those that want it. And contrary to the myths about British beer-drinkers, I don't like beer. However, a British pint is 568 ml, a US liquid pint 476 ml, and a US dry pint 551 ml. Which one did you mean? I might as well pick your brains thoroughly and make a note for when we dig into one or other of our recipe books and find 'cups' specified!
Cheers
John

Both. There is a liquid cup which is 1/2 of a liquid pint, and a dry cup which is 1/2 of a dry pint. Recipes don't usually explain which one to use--it just assumes that you know to use a liquid measuring cup for liquid ingredients, and a dry measuring cup for dry ingredients.

SWM wrote:

John Prigent wrote:Thanks, Poker! Actually I buy my milk in 2-pint bottles, with the metric equivalent marked on them for those that want it. And contrary to the myths about British beer-drinkers, I don't like beer. However, a British pint is 568 ml, a US liquid pint 476 ml, and a US dry pint 551 ml. Which one did you mean? I might as well pick your brains thoroughly and make a note for when we dig into one or other of our recipe books and find 'cups' specified!
Cheers
John

Both. There is a liquid cup which is 1/2 of a liquid pint, and a dry cup which is 1/2 of a dry pint. Recipes don't usually explain which one to use--it just assumes that you know to use a liquid measuring cup for liquid ingredients, and a dry measuring cup for dry ingredients.

And no-one differentiates between them. BTW there are also metric cup measurements too. In cooking ratio's are what is important not absolute measures, if you make a 600g or 650g no-one will care. Ditto for most chemistry. When you are selling things (or shooting at them) then it gets messy.

The Metric system was introduced because France needed to standardize for military reasons, and since it was running most of Europe at the time, they became metric too (just like they got the basics of the French legal system - which they still use). Empires thrive on standardised measures and taxes, since a bureaucracy wants to pay a given price for a given item anywhere or want to know why (and an army is a bureaucracy on steroids (and with guns)).
In Europe a foot didn't even have to be 12 inches (it was 11 in Amsterdam).
The logical way to go at this stage from the Charisian perspective would be to go soft metric. Define an inch as exactly 25mm (or 2.5 whatevers) and then work from there - at this stage the CoGA wouldn't even notice the difference as one of the inches used somewhere else would match exactly...
For more: https://standards.nasa.gov/history_metric.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inch#/medi ... verter.jpg
BTW the US has two currently legally defined inch standards, one for normal use and another for ground survey work - they differ by 0.00002% or 1/8" per mile.

AirTech wrote:The logical way to go at this stage from the Charisian perspective would be to go soft metric. Define an inch as exactly 25mm (or 2.5 whatevers) and then work from there - at this stage the CoGA wouldn't even notice the difference as one of the inches used somewhere else would match exactly...

Well, the Delthak inch is one standard that they've done a lot of work to keep consistent and in spreading use. They could go from there in a metric-inspired fashion, with measures of volume, mass, force, etc. all based on there, and larger and smaller units of any of them in standardized prefixes and along base 10 or base 12 (for instance) increments.

The Delthak inch has been helpful in that it's just taking the standard Safehold inch (may Langhorne burn in eternal torment at some high temperature Kelvin) and standardizing it. You wouldn't remain in close equivalents to Safehold's conventional measurements and have metric's interrelatedness across different measured properties and consistent base [insert favorite] structure, so it would have to run on the charm of utility from there rather than on the strength of familiarity.

JeffEngel wrote:

AirTech wrote:The logical way to go at this stage from the Charisian perspective would be to go soft metric. Define an inch as exactly 25mm (or 2.5 whatevers) and then work from there - at this stage the CoGA wouldn't even notice the difference as one of the inches used somewhere else would match exactly...

Well, the Delthak inch is one standard that they've done a lot of work to keep consistent and in spreading use. They could go from there in a metric-inspired fashion, with measures of volume, mass, force, etc. all based on there, and larger and smaller units of any of them in standardized prefixes and along base 10 or base 12 (for instance) increments.

The Delthak inch has been helpful in that it's just taking the standard Safehold inch (may Langhorne burn in eternal torment at some high temperature Kelvin) and standardizing it. You wouldn't remain in close equivalents to Safehold's conventional measurements and have metric's interrelatedness across different measured properties and consistent base [insert favorite] structure, so it would have to run on the charm of utility from there rather than on the strength of familiarity.

Exactly. You don't need a new measurement, just a way of logically implementing what you already have. Trying to re-establish the meter would be incredibly difficult, especially since you couldn't explain to anyone on Safehold who wasn't already in the know where the darned thing came from!

No, using a regular progression from the Inch makes far more sense given the current religious/societal setup. Once you have the inch standardized, you can then re-standardize all the derivative measurements. For instance, inspired by original Imperial measurements, we could have...
12 inches = 1 foot (already existing, no problems there).
3 feet (36 inches) = 1 yard
12 feet (4 yards) = 1 cord (measurement invented for Safehold)
12 cords (144 feet) = 1 rope
12 ropes(1,728 feet) = 1 cable
3 cables (5,184 feet, 12x12x12x3) = 1 Delthak Mile (1 Earth Imperial mile = 5,280 feet)
12 cables (4 Delthak Miles) = 1 Delthak League
12 Delthak Leagues (48DMile/144 cables) = 1 Delthak Grand League

From the way that many different countries use different inches, they probably have mildly divergent definitions of what a mile actually is. This would allow for "adjustments" to be made, hence the whole simplification without needing new basic measurements thing.

looksbeforeheleaps, my apologies. It appears my math was wrong and yours was not.

Michael Everett wrote:Exactly. You don't need a new measurement, just a way of logically implementing what you already have.
[SNIP]
For instance, inspired by original Imperial measurements, we could have...
12 inches = 1 foot (already existing, no problems there).
3 feet (36 inches) = 1 yard
12 feet (4 yards) = 1 cord (measurement invented for Safehold)

I agree, except: Unless you don't wont to convert the Safeholdian numbering convention to a base 12 system, use only powers of 10 between different units.
In fact, this is the main advantage of metric units: One base and the rest is just numbers in line with our counting conventions. You can do that with every base; the SI system is just the one convention we're all familiar with (except for backwards US). And I don't think, convincing people to say something like "sixzen eight" instead of eighty would really fly...
And if it goes to natural sciences, Owl can do the rescaling of all the constants in no time at all. Since the Charisians have to at least reformulate science in their own terms instead of simply publishing the memory core at the Cave, it's not that much of a difference.

I just realized that this has been an entertaining hour I just spent reading the comments on the metric topic. Must have been the horrible March weather that provided all the time to create the comments and yet we have no real conclusion. Interesting and somewhat educational but alas, to what end. I still need metric tools and English tools for working on the myriad of stuff here on the farm. Nothing consistent. Oh well the release of HFQ will make it all better, as they say.

Michael Everett wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:Well, the Delthak inch is one standard that they've done a lot of work to keep consistent and in spreading use. They could go from there in a metric-inspired fashion, with measures of volume, mass, force, etc. all based on there, and larger and smaller units of any of them in standardized prefixes and along base 10 or base 12 (for instance) increments.

The Delthak inch has been helpful in that it's just taking the standard Safehold inch (may Langhorne burn in eternal torment at some high temperature Kelvin) and standardizing it. You wouldn't remain in close equivalents to Safehold's conventional measurements and have metric's interrelatedness across different measured properties and consistent base [insert favorite] structure, so it would have to run on the charm of utility from there rather than on the strength of familiarity.

Exactly. You don't need a new measurement, just a way of logically implementing what you already have. Trying to re-establish the meter would be incredibly difficult, especially since you couldn't explain to anyone on Safehold who wasn't already in the know where the darned thing came from!

No, using a regular progression from the Inch makes far more sense given the current religious/societal setup. Once you have the inch standardized, you can then re-standardize all the derivative measurements. For instance, inspired by original Imperial measurements, we could have...
12 inches = 1 foot (already existing, no problems there).
3 feet (36 inches) = 1 yard
12 feet (4 yards) = 1 cord (measurement invented for Safehold)
12 cords (144 feet) = 1 rope
12 ropes(1,728 feet) = 1 cable
3 cables (5,184 feet, 12x12x12x3) = 1 Delthak Mile (1 Earth Imperial mile = 5,280 feet)
12 cables (4 Delthak Miles) = 1 Delthak League
12 Delthak Leagues (48DMile/144 cables) = 1 Delthak Grand League

From the way that many different countries use different inches, they probably have mildly divergent definitions of what a mile actually is. This would allow for "adjustments" to be made, hence the whole simplification without needing new basic measurements thing.

I like your reorganization! It's clever, but doomed. I'm willing to guess that they already have standard measures that are all, related to/convertible to, the inch already, so the only real innovation you could slip in was a standardized inch. And they probably are all versions of the olde imperial measurements because Langhorne wanted confusion. We don't know this of course because really, a treatise on the standard weights and measures of Safehold would probably bog the story down a bit. It's a good bet though. And to get everyone to switch to a whole raft of new measuring terms for what is, in the end, a purely academic concern, is probably just as unlikely as getting everyone to switch to metric. Will it, someday, happen. Perhaps... who knows. But it's a fictional society, on a fictional world, created so the author can tell us a good rousing story and indulge his imagination for our enjoyment. Worrying about the measurement system as a plot point seems... well just a bit silly. The story of this place is, I hope, more about the political and social struggle. The development of plot and character, and the inspirational idea of mankind reclaiming the stars... along with a desire to put a boot up the backsides of the genocidal buggers who tried to kill us all off in the first place. Good solid emotional appeal that. The minutia of base 10 verses base 12 is interesting, but frankly humans here on earth advanced rather far using the old measurement systems, so I just can't see it as being a major impediment.

And with that mish-mosh of arguments, I leave you to get on to other things. Like a recipe for Lamb meatballs with mushroom sauce. It's dinner time!

Larry

cadastral wrote:IIRC, the original definition of a meter was to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole, which would make it a bit oddly sized for Safehold.

(Also IIRC, when the meter was standardized, and the Earth was measured more precisely, the meter was found to be slightly off in size.)

Another solution would be to convert Safehold to a base 12 numbering system, which would allow the existing foot and inch to function as the basis of a new metric system.

(Although now that I think about it, do we have confirmation that there are 12 Safehold inches in a Safehold foot?)

Another thought that came to me is ;do Delthak inches divide as fractions ,always a pian in the butt,or a standard mesure like the Bob?[url][url]http://www.whitechapel-ltd.com/category/bob.html[/url][/url]