Foot stuff

[brainbomb]

I was wondering how you guys feel about the use of feet

in europe its all meters. Do you think wrapping our geads around feet is possible

[RoganJosh]

I have two feet. They're not the same length.

[Claesar]

Mine even differ almost half a European shoe size.

[Octavious]

In the UK I tend to use chains on a professional basis, which as you know is 66 feet (or 22 yards if you prefer). There are 80 chains in a mile and 100 links in a chain.

The foot, of course, is the old Roman system consisting of 12 uncia (from which became the British inch and the Spanish uno). It's a fantastic natural unit roughly equivalent to the length of the end bit of your thumb, much like the foot is a foot, a yard is a pace, and a fathom is the length between your two outstretched hands.

The metric system is a load of souless shite fit only for computers.

[Octavious]

I was wondering how you guys feel about the use of feet

in europe its all meters. Do you think wrapping our geads around feet is possible

One small point. In America it is all meters. In Europe it is metres.

[PRINCE WILLIAM]

The metric system is a load of souless shite fit only for computers.

Ιt is because the damn things rule the world!

Is it true that how long a foot would be was measured after Edward the First the Longshanks?

[dargorygel]

The metric system is a load of souless shite fit only for computers.

Ιt is because the damn things rule the world!

Is it true that how long a foot would be was measured after Edward the First the Longshanks?

Well... well... he's "Longshanks," not "Bigfoot."

[brainbomb]

something is afoot

[Yigg]

Tarantino approves this forum thread.

[dargorygel]

Tarantino approves this forum thread.

With respect, dear Master Yigg... Tarantino could not even SPELL this forum thread.

[dipperjay]

Off topics on this off topic - US congress made the metric system preferred in 1975 (initiated by President Ford), but didn’t make it mandatory. So I guess the power of congress back then was a low as it is today.

[Atreiju]

The Imperial system is superior because it can divided into thirds and quarters easily without using annoying decimals. The metric system is just based on how many fingers we have. Base 12 > Base 10. Fahrenheit is dumb though

[Octavious]

Out of curiosity, what range of imperial measurements are used in the US?

Is it just inches, feet, yards, and miles? Do you have links and rods and chains and furlongs too? I've never gotten used to the American habit of measuring weight in pounds instead of stones and pounds like sensible people, and the least said about tiny American pints the better. I'm hoping length is the same on both sides of the pond.

[dipperjay]

Out of curiosity, what range of imperial measurements are used in the US?

Is it just inches, feet, yards, and miles? Do you have links and rods and chains and furlongs too? I've never gotten used to the American habit of measuring weight in pounds instead of stones and pounds like sensible people, and the least said about tiny American pints the better. I'm hoping length is the same on both sides of the pond.

For length, it’s inches, feet and miles, yards are typically used less, except sports (in particular American Football). And yes, there’s pounds for weights, and cups, quarts and gallons for volume.

[Octavious]

And yards for beer, of course :)

[BobMcBob]

And yards for beer, of course :)

Yards? Pathetic! I measure by beer in furlongs!

To be honest, I think the Imperial measurement system is a load of junk. There are 12 inches to a foot, 3 feet to a yard, 220 yards in a furlong, 8 furlongs in a mile, 17 miles to a chicken-fence and 39 chicken-fences to a bankruptcy.

Compare that to the good old metric system, with 10 millimetres to a centimetre, 100 centimetres to a metre and 1000 metres to a kilometre. It's much nicer, less sporadic and less complicated. Use nice numbers folks. Feet suck.

[Octavious]

100 links in a chain, 10 chains in a furlong. The Imperial system is perfectly capable of doing it decimal style if it wants to :). Although I admit it's a bit of a shame we lost the old definition of a mile as 1000 paces somewhere in history. Then no one would have felt the need to arse about with the metric system in the first place.

[RoganJosh]

We should just pick one of those imperial units and add prefixes and then everyone would be happy. You know. I ran 30 kilofeet in an hour yesterday. And New York is only 18 megafeet from here. A walk in the park.

[Octavious]

We should just pick one of those imperial units and add prefixes and then everyone would be happy. You know. I ran 30 kilofeet in an hour yesterday. And New York is only 18 megafeet from here. A walk in the park.

I think the idea has merit, but to avoid confusion we should use Roman prefixes rather than Greek. So a hundred yards becomes a centiyard and a thousand yards becomes a miliyard etc. Naturally centiyards are of limited use as its a very intermediate sort of distance, but miliyards could catch on. It's a bit of a mouthful, but abbreviating it to milies has potential. Maybe even enough to be adopted into popular culture.

But I would walk 500 milies
And I would walk 500 more
Just to be the man who walks a thousand milies
To fall down at your door…

We may even reach the stage where milies becomes such a popular term for a unit of length that people use it automatically without even being aware that it is a prefix. But it's hard to imagine living in such a world.

[Claesar]

And I'd rather walk 500 milies than 880.