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Groups > comp.os.linux.misc > #80418
| From | Lars Poulsen <lars@beagle-ears.com> |
|---|---|
| Newsgroups | comp.os.linux.misc, alt.unix.geeks |
| Subject | Re: DUC[KT] tape |
| Followup-To | alt.unix.geeks |
| Date | 2026-01-03 14:26 +0000 |
| Organization | A noiseless patient Spider |
| Message-ID | <slrn10li9pf.gf5b.lars@cleo.beagle-ears.com> (permalink) |
| References | (3 earlier) <10j61ja$3hv7b$1@dont-email.me> <7cadnTFwKKy978r0nZ2dnZfqn_idnZ2d@giganews.com> <slrn10lfmmb.95fc.lars@cleo.beagle-ears.com> <mrraraF6n51U7@mid.individual.net> <r_6cnS1Bc8LsHMX0nZ2dnZfqnPadnZ2d@giganews.com> |
Cross-posted to 2 groups.
Followups directed to: alt.unix.geeks
On 2026-01-03, c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:
> On 1/2/26 20:48, rbowman wrote:
>> On Fri, 2 Jan 2026 14:48:43 -0000 (UTC), Lars Poulsen wrote:
>>
>>>> On 1/1/26 09:50, Mike Scott wrote:
>>>>> https://www.ducktape.co.uk/
>>>
>>> On 2026-01-02, c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:
>>>> Yep, originally "Duck" ... then later, likely for brand-name legal
>>>> reasons, oft said "Duct".
>>>>
>>>> It IS good for 'ducts' too.
>>>
>>> My nieces in Denmark call it Gaffer tape.
>>>
>>> My understanding is that it was developed for sealing ammunition
>>> canisters in WW2, and the grunts called it duck tape.
>>
>> The grunts called it 100 mph tape. You could patch up your Jeep and it
>> wouldn't blow off. Of course 100 mph was very optimistic for a Jeep but
>> it sounds better than 65 mph tape. I suppose 100 kph tape would work but
>> the US still isn't comfortable with kph.
>
> Kilometers are TOO SHORT !
>
> Meters are TOO LONG !
>
> Centimeters are TOO SHORT, not to mention millimeters !
>
> The English units are inconvenient, but they ARE much
> closer to what I'd call "human-scale" values. It's
> easy to hold yer fingers about an inch apart. A 'foot'
> is kind-of the size of a (largish) foot. A yard is
> about the size of a 'long stride'. Pints are just the
> right size for a Guinness.
>
> Expect USA to hold on to those imperial measures for
> a long long time ... save the metric for 'technical'
> junk.
>
> On the flip, the USA currency system IS far more
> clear than traditional British - 'decimal'.
Many years ago (over 25 years ago), I collected these:
* * *
** British Measures **
Recent discussions on alt.folklore.computers have reminded me just how
funny and confusing the traditional English measures can be. Some of
them still live on in the USA, while the English themselves are now
safely ashore in the metric system.
*Ounces, Pounds and Pints*
(www.sciencemadesimple.com/conversions.html - a serious tool)
In current American usage, 8 ounces make a cup, 2 cups make a pint, two
pints make a quart, 4 quarts make a gallon. A pint of water weighs a
pound.
But in the British empire, it took 20 (fluid) ounces to make an imperial
pint, making the Imperial gallon 25% bigger than the American gallon.
Thus, we have the common American claim that "a pint is a pound the
world around" pitted against the English statement that "a pint of water
weighs a pound and a quarter".
But in England, it got a lot worse, because there were two different
ounces! Precious metals and apothecary goods were sold in troy (or
apothecary) ounces of 480 grains each, while everything else was traded
in avoirdupois ounces of 437.5 grains each. Thus, the comforting fact
that an ounce of gold (31.1 grams) weighs more than an ounce of feathers
(28.35 grams). On the other hand, the troy pound has only 12 ounces,
while the avoirdupois pound has 16 ounces, so a pound of gold (373
grams) weighs LESS than a pound of feathers (454 grams).
Larger measures: A hogshead (238 liters) is 7 firkins (US) or just under
6 firkins (British) and I have heard it said that this is also half a
pipe, but I have not found a written reference to the measure of a pipe.
A barrel (British) appears to be anywhere from 31 gallons to 42 gallons,
although the most common definition seems to be 36 gallons (164 liters).
An American barrel of dry measure is 105 dry quarts (116 liters), but a
liquid barrel is 31.5 gallons (liquid) or 119 liters, unless the barrel
contains petroleum, in which case it contains 42 (US) gallons or 159
liters.
The three different ounces:
- a fluid ounce is 29.573 ml
- a troy ounce is 31.1 g
- an ounce avoirdupois is 28.35 g
There's also something called "dry measure" with units of pint, quart,
peck and bushel for measuring quantities of fruits, grains, and whatnot.
1 pint dry is 0.551 l, while 1 pint liquid is 0.473 l.
*Inches, Rods, Chains and Furlongs*
An inch is the outer part of a man's thumb, 25.4 millimeter to be exact.
12 inches to a foot, two feet to a cubit or three feet to a yard.
A rod/pole is 5.5 yards (16.5 feet): The size of a big stick carried
around by builders (hence the name).
Four rods make a chain (22 yards) - the distance between two (cricket)
wickets. Ten chains make a furlong. A furlong square is ten acres. Eight
furlongs make a mile.
A perch was originaly a big stick, but later became a volume. A perch
was a pile of stone one rod long by one foot wide by one cubit high).
*Temperatures in Fahrenheit*
People raised with Celsius temperatures find the Fahrenheit temperature
scale equally bizarre, and wonder how it came to be that water freezes
at 32 degrees Fahrentheit and boils at 212 degrees F; two oddball
numbers. A correspondent to alt.folklore computer describes it as
follows:
Fahrenheit's claim to fame was that he had a (proprietary) technique for
making glass tubes with a constant inner bore. Thermometers that he made
with that technique were exceptionally accurate. They still had to be
calibrated, of course (it's deucedly hard to get exactly the right
amount of liquid in the bulb), but once two marks were placed on the
completed thermometer it was straightforward to interpolate other marks
linearly in between, confident that because of the constant bore such
marks would match the corresponding linearly interpolated temperatures.
Notice that both the position and spacing of the marks would vary from
one thermometer to the next. It was tricky enough making each tube have
a constant bore along its length. Making all the tubes coming out of the
same factory have the same constant bore was too much to hope for. In
any event the distance between marks still depends on the ratio of the
volume of the bulb to the area of the bore, and he wasn't able to make
that ratio so uniform.
It helps if the two reference temperatures differ by a power of two,
because then interpolating the other marks is as simple as repeatedly
halving the interval. He chose as his reference temperatures the
temperature of melting ice and the temperature of his dog's rectum.
(Poor mutt.) He assigned those temperatures the numbers 32 and 96, which
differ by 64 degrees.
He started at 32 rather than 0 to better handle subfreezing
temperatures. 32, also a power of two, simplified the task of adding the
subfreezing temperature marks, and was enough to shift the range so
that, as a fortuitous consequence, 0 would be "about as cold as it gets"
and 100 would be "about as hot as it gets". "About", in both cases. 0
and 100 were not the reference temperatures; 32 and 96 were. He was
thinking binary, not decimal.
-Ron Hunsinger - hnsngr@sirius.com
*Guineas, Pounds, Shillings, Pence and Farthings*
Prior to the currency reform around 1970, there were 12 pennies to the
shilling, and 20 shillings to the pound, making 240 pennies to the
pound. The halfpenny was also legal tender, and prior to about 1957
there was also a coin called a farthing, which was equal to a quarter of
a penny.
The pound was abbreviated "L" for "Libra" (latin for a pound of silver).
The shilling was abbreviated "s" for "solidus", and the penny was
abbreviated "d" for "denarius".
After the reform, there were 100 (new) pence to a pound, but visitors
were quite confused, because the old coins remained legal tender. For
example, the old sixpence coin was now 2 1/2 (new) pence; to avoid
confusion, the new pence were abbreviated "p" (for "pence"). As old
coins wore out, new coins were minted in the same shape but imprinted
with the decimal value.
How could a system as complicated as the 1/20/12 ratios have developed ?
One source claims that the three units originally were unrelated.
There was a unit of currency called the shilling. It was used by big
business and worth quite a bit (about a month's wages). Its value went
up and down as the medium of exchange -- a month's work -- became rare or
plentiful -- high employment or low employment.
There was another unit of currency called the penny. It was the general
medium of exchange for a bulk item (baker's dozen of loaves, a month's
rent, travel from Oxford to London). It was divided into quarters so you
could buy a single loaf or a jug of milk.
Another unit was used by huge business: the banks, shipbuilders, those
who dealt in metals or in entire shiploads of goods. It was equivalent
to the cost of a pound of silver.
There were also groats and sovereigns. I'm not sure about them.
These all existed independently. If you were the kind of person who
dealt in pounds, there was never any need for you to encounter a penny.
If you paid rent of a shilling a month for your house, you could never
thing of seeing a whole pound. The different units of currency had
constantly-shifting exchange rates depending on demand-and-suppply. If
three trading ships came in at the same month all laden with goods, the
value of the pound would go up with respect to the shilling and penny.
Eventually there was so much interplay between the different currencies
that it became necessary to fix the exchange rates to stop a rich man
keeping all his wealth in pennies because he thought that the pound was
going to go down. At about that time, a pound was worth about twenty
shillings and a shilling was worth about twelve pennies, so that's how
they fixed it.
The disparate systems did not bother ordinary people. No need to know
what a shilling was until you were old enough to pay rent. No need to
know what a pound was unless you were a clerk, in which case you were
trained. More recently (i.e. when I went to school) it was a standard
part of early schooling.
I really don't believe any of this, but it is an interesting theory.
Back to the facts. Certain items were traditionally billed in Guineas. A
guinea is one pound and a shilling. I have heard it claimed that this
originated in real estate transactions, where the pound went to the
seller, while the shilling was the lawyer's commission for doing the
paperwork.
*Summary of English Money*
- two farthings made a halfpenny (ha'penny)
- two halfpennies made a penny
- three pennies made a thrupenny bit
- a thrupenny bit and a penny made a groat
- two thrupenny bits made a tanner
- two tanners made a bob
- two bob made a florin (a.k.a. a two bob bit)
- two bob and a tanner made half a crown (a.k.a. half a dollar)
- two half dollars made a crown
- two crown made a ten bob note
- two ten bob notes made a quid
- twentyone bob made a guinea
- and those guys thought that "decimal money would be too complicated
for ordinary people" to switch to ...
*The Metric Reform*
Around 1963, the Bristish government pushed through a general conversion
to the metric system. personally remember a set of posters published by
the Construction Industry Training Board, which I ordered through the
mail after hearing them advertized on Radio Luxembourg. English born
colleagues remember ditties they learned in school, such as "a litre of
water's a pint and three quarters" or "two and a quarter pounds of jam
weighs about a kilogram".
--
Lars Poulsen - an old geek in Santa Barbara, California
Back to comp.os.linux.misc | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar
This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ? c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2025-12-29 05:31 -0500
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Re: This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ? c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-01-02 06:08 -0500
Re: This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ? rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-01-03 01:34 +0000
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Re: This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ? "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2026-01-02 11:45 +0100
Re: This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ? c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-01-02 06:16 -0500
Re: This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ? Mike Scott <usenet.16@scottsonline.org.uk.invalid> - 2026-01-02 17:10 +0000
Re: This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ? c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-01-02 14:55 -0500
Re: This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ? "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2026-01-02 22:07 +0100
Re: This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ? "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2026-01-02 22:19 +0100
Re: This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ? rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-01-03 01:42 +0000
Re: This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ? c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-01-02 21:21 -0500
Re: This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ? Mike Scott <usenet.16@scottsonline.org.uk.invalid> - 2026-01-03 08:46 +0000
Re: This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ? "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2026-01-03 14:35 +0100
Re: Sun Position (was Re: This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ?) Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-01-03 22:00 +0000
Re: This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ? Mike Scott <usenet.16@scottsonline.org.uk.invalid> - 2026-01-01 14:50 +0000
Re: This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ? c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-01-02 02:22 -0500
DUC[KT] tape Lars Poulsen <lars@beagle-ears.com> - 2026-01-02 14:48 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2026-01-02 14:56 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-01-02 10:21 -0500
Re: DUC[KT] tape rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-01-03 01:58 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape Peter 'Shaggy' Haywood <phaywood@alphalink.com.au> - 2026-01-05 11:28 +1100
Re: DUC[KT] tape Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2026-01-06 13:32 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape Robert Riches <spamtrap42@jacob21819.net> - 2026-01-07 02:14 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-01-06 22:42 -0500
Re: DUC[KT] tape Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2026-01-07 06:33 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2026-01-07 09:33 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-01-07 18:45 -0500
Re: DUC[KT] tape Peter 'Shaggy' Haywood <phaywood@alphalink.com.au> - 2026-01-09 12:13 +1100
Re: DUC[KT] tape rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-01-10 02:52 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2026-01-10 10:20 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-01-10 20:07 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-01-10 20:45 -0500
Re: DUC[KT] tape rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-01-11 06:02 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-01-11 01:30 -0500
Re: DUC[KT] tape The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2026-01-11 12:04 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape vs Gaffer tape Lars Poulsen <lars@beagle-ears.com> - 2026-01-07 14:40 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-01-02 10:16 -0500
Re: DUC[KT] tape rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-01-03 01:59 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-01-03 01:48 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-01-02 21:39 -0500
Re: DUC[KT] tape The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2026-01-03 08:42 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-01-03 07:09 -0500
Re: DUC[KT] tape The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2026-01-03 13:58 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-01-03 21:35 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-01-03 16:56 -0500
Re: DUC[KT] tape The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2026-01-03 23:01 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape Lars Poulsen <lars@beagle-ears.com> - 2026-01-03 23:38 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-01-03 19:51 -0500
Re: DUC[KT] tape rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-01-04 05:42 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2026-01-04 11:02 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-01-05 00:31 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2026-01-04 10:56 +0000
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Re: DUC[KT] tape Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2026-01-03 23:41 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-01-03 20:31 -0500
Re: DUC[KT] tape Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2026-01-04 10:48 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2026-01-04 10:53 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2026-01-04 10:52 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-01-04 06:05 +0000
Re: DUC[KT] tape Lars Poulsen <lars@beagle-ears.com> - 2026-01-03 14:26 +0000
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Re: This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-01-01 23:56 +0000
Re: This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ? Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2026-01-02 02:18 +0000
Re: This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-01-02 05:02 +0000
Re: This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ? Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2026-01-02 06:04 +0000
Re: This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-01-02 21:27 +0000
Re: This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ? Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2026-01-03 00:18 +0000
Re: This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ? c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-01-02 21:44 -0500
Re: This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ? Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2026-01-03 06:09 +0000
Re: This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-01-03 08:41 +0000
Re: This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ? "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2026-01-05 12:52 +0100
Re: This Is a Job For - Polarizing Film ? rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-01-02 07:25 +0000
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