Model Forum / Radio Controlled / Air Models / December 2006

That's a good point.  Inches and feet were standardized to represent
commonly used distances.  Leave it to the French to decide that the
standard unit of measure should be based on the circumference of the
earth, which has great spiritual meaning to the human race but is
utterly meaningless in everyday life.  Look under the hood of a Peugeot
if you want to see some more great French engineering.

The reason why the English measuring system has been so slow to be
eradicated is because it makes a lot of practical sense.  It satisfies
human nature to divide and multiply things by 2, which is something the
metric system doesn't do.

As long as we're talking about doing things in a practical way, I think
we should pass a law eradicating decimal numbering in general, and
replace it with base 8.  We can call it the "octimal system".  This
system would satisfy the desire to have measurements based on multiples
of 10 (which would be the next number after 7), as well as the innate
human need to multiply and divide by 2.  OK, I'm being sarcastic,
because I know this would never happen, but it's actually a very good
idea.  Sometimes I wish that people had been a little bit smarter and
started with 8 in the first place.  It makes a lot of sense.  More
people would be good at math.

And while we're at it, let's get rid of the Gregorian calendar and start
a new calendar in the new century.  We'll call it the Reynoldsian
calendar.  There are 13 months with 28 days each.  Every month begins on
a Sunday and ends on a Saturday.  Therefore, you don't have to ask what
day of the week the 23rd is, it's always a Monday no matter what year or
month this is.  There would be one day left over to make a complete 365
day year, and it wouldn't be a day of any month or week.  It would be
New Year's Day.  You would go from Saturday, December 28th to New Year's
Day, to Sunday, January first.  Every four years you would have Leap Day
in between June and Robuary.  (If Julius and Augustus can name months
after themselves, I can, too, because I invented a better calendar.)
Now If I could just beat some sense into people's heads and get laws
passed to outlaw stupidity, we would all have better lives.

-------------

I first encountered the metric system in the Sixties while learning
electronics. I have been a convert ever since.

Do you suppose that the too making industry lobbyists have been super
successful at dragging out our conversion (US) to metric so long? After all,
they stand to sell the mechanically inclined two full tool sets as things
are today? <G>

Ed Cregger

So you don't know that one, I have to look it up myself.  Original one
fluid ounce of water was to be one ounce of weight which would make it
exactly 8 pounds per gallon, but someone some where changed this.

WoW, don't know if you have good memory or a good calculator.

Which is stupid and hard to remember.

They can use whatever they want, its commercial applications which
would be affected.

I still say you would find base 8 easier if you had started with it.
When I worked as an aircraft mechanic, on the wall in every hangar bay
was a conversion chart for decimals and common fractions.  Decimals
follow the "counting by tens" method, which is why we specify .062
aluminum, for instance, whereas "common fractions" are common because of
the human tendency to divide by 2 over and over, yielding 1/16" for the
same piece of aluminum.

There's nothing inherently easy about counting 10.  It just happens to
be the number of digits we have on our hands.  However, counting by 8
would be inherently logical and easy.  1/4 would be .2, 1/2 would be .4,
and 3/4 would be .6.  What we know as 1/16 would become 1/20 in base 8,
which would be the same thing as .04.  It's quite intuitively obvious,
unlike those crazy decimal/fraction conversion charts.  In base 8,
"common fractions" and decimals (or octimals) would be the same thing.
Sometimes I wish that I could see how the world would be different with
base 8 math.  I believe that if that counting method were standard,
everybody would find basic math quite obvious and simple.  And we
probably would never have had quite so many different measuring systems.

The message <12ok0m799oegb0b@corp.supernews.com>
from Geoff Sanders <geoffs@hevanet.com> contains these words:

The thread diameter would be the 1/4 and 15/32 the head across the flats
I think, I used to buy AF (Across Flats) tool sets as they were
particularly useful although not a perfect fit in many cases, I could
understand UNF, Whitworth, BSW and even Metric but BA sizes take some
understanding if you havnt had much experience of them before, the BA
system as you may know doesnt give a diameter but goes by a number i.e
2BA or 6BA or whatever so if possible I stick to Metric sizes as the
taps and dies are much cheaper,

                             regards,              Terry

Geoff (or as we'd say here "stateside"- Jeff):

    Just make it easy on yourself-  get a table saw of a size suitable to
your workspace, and cut your stock yourself-  it solves all the problems
with systems of units, and supplies of stock.  They're also  useful
making field boxes, home improvement projects and on and on-
    Remember-  I'm on your side-    Paul