Different Metric Systems

Has anyone considered alternatives to the current Système International in their TLs?

For my "For Want of a Nail" (British North America) TL, I'm thinking about defining the International Foot or "Pied du Dieu" as the length light travels in one-billionth of a second (a nanosecond) and defining my International System of Ordinances (Iso) from there.

Anyone have any other ideas?

Unless one is a space faring race, in which the "the length light travels in one-billionth of a second" would be of some importance, I don't see why any nation would adopt a system which would be completely without precedence - unless there was a fantastic revolution lead by scientists. Not to mention the prolonged period of time of conversion and eventually phasing out the older systems.

I can see using 'light seconds' as a measure of distance etc. in realms where one is considering vast distances of space and incredible speeds with which to cross them - but in use on such programs as Mapquest or giving directions to the pharmacy down the road I don't see them very useful.

ISO Basic Measures

1 foot (ft)= distance light travels in one thousand-millionth of a second (nanosecond) (.299792458 metres or 11.803 Old British inches.)

1 plate (pl)= 1 ft^2 (.08985518 m^2)

1 crate (cr)= 1 ft^3 (.02694400 m^3)

1 talent (tl)= the mass of a crate of purest water at standard temperature and pressure. (26.944 kg)

1 degree (°)= difference between the boiling and freezing temperatures of water at one atmosphere. 1 centdegree or degree-centigrade (°C)=1 hundredth of one degree unit=one degree Celsius.

David S Poepoe said:

Unless one is a space faring race, in which the "the length light travels in one-billionth of a second" would be of some importance, I don't see why any nation would adopt a system which would be completely without precedence - unless there was a fantastic revolution lead by scientists. Not to mention the prolonged period of time of conversion and eventually phasing out the older systems.

I can see using 'light seconds' as a measure of distance etc. in realms where one is considering vast distances of space and incredible speeds with which to cross them - but in use on such programs as Mapquest or giving directions to the pharmacy down the road I don't see them very useful.

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The "foot" is a fundamental measure in virtually all cultures; the trouble lies in converting one nation's foot to another's! Take the famous misunderstanding about Napoleon's height; in old pieds du roi Nappy is 5'2". Short guy, right? NO. He would have measured 5'7" in British units, slightly taller than the average man of the day!

In timelines where the French Revolution is avoided, and the Metric System never formulated, there is still a need for scientists from all nations to have a common system of measure, a lingua franca if you will. The advantages are too great for it not to be devised.

With the happy discovery of the speed of light a fundamental constant is available to all. And, by happy coincidence, the distance light travels in a nanosecond is 11.803 of our inches!

A possible reformed British system? Perhaps American?

1 crate = 8 new gallons = 64 new pints
1 talent = 64 new pounds
1 new mile = 8 furlongs = 80 chains = 1760 yards =5280 ft (5193.25518 old feet) Mount Everest would measure 29520 ft.

I've been aware of the 'French foot' vs. 'English foot' measurement of Napoleon for quite some time and find the stereotyping of Napoleon humorous to say the least.

I don't doubt that a move will be made to standardize, tho I think it would be by whatever the dominant Nation/culture would be - as in English as the practical lingua franca of today. However, outside publications in scientific journals I don't see the everyday people embracing new formats of measurements without some disagreement.

Also I would consider the adoption of a universal measurement system, other than the likes of the metric system - or one being of relative recent discovery - as being cost prohibitive in the short term, no matter the benefits in the long term. Here locally there is always a terrible degree of dislike to create new telephone area codes because of the expense of businesses reprinting envelopes and various stationary with the new three digit code.

Perhaps it would be likely under an entirely integrated world economic system of trade and commerce.

David S Poepoe said:

I've been aware of the 'French foot' vs. 'English foot' measurement of Napoleon for quite some time and find the stereotyping of Napoleon humorous to say the least.

I don't doubt that a move will be made to standardize, tho I think it would be by whatever the dominant Nation/culture would be - as in English as the practical lingua franca of today. However, outside publications in scientific journals I don't see the everyday people embracing new formats of measurements without some disagreement.

Also I would consider the adoption of a universal measurement system, other than the likes of the metric system - or one being of relative recent discovery - as being cost prohibitive in the short term, no matter the benefits in the long term. Here locally there is always a terrible degree of dislike to create new telephone area codes because of the expense of businesses reprinting envelopes and various stationary with the new three digit code.

Perhaps it would be likely under an entirely integrated world economic system of trade and commerce.

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I would argue to the contrary; just as globalization uses a lingua franca (English) it must also use a mensa franca (Metric.) Indeed, a common system of measurement must be used, for without it international trade would be bogged down in converting French inches to Saxon inches to British inches to Dutch inches and on and on and on...

More New American/British Imperial measures

1 Foot

• 3 hands
• 12 inches
• 72 picas
• 432 points

1 Plate

• 9 palms
• 144 thumbnails (square inches)
• 5184 scribbles
• 186624 dots

1 Talent

• 4 stones
• 64 pounds
• 1600 ounces
• 8000 drams
• 1000000 spores

Possible implications

One effect may be to have automobiles register speeds in feet/second rather than miles/hour as countries may have different miles.

Thus in Britain or America or Australia 60 mi/hr = 88 ft/s, whereas in France the mile is longer than the English by a fourth, so in France 60 mi/hr = 110 ft/s.

British system cont.

1 section = 1 mi^2

• 64 square furlongs (decacres)
• 640 acres
• 6400 square chains
• 27878400 plates

Today's value of a talent of gold.

Today's value of a talent of silver.

Accully the old English/roman System is a universal type system like to metric, except it is base 12

12 inch= 1 foot 12 foot= 1 rod 12 rod =1 chain 12 chain = 1 mile =1728 ft = old roman mile
1 onzce = 1 cubic inch of water 1 pint = 1 pound= 12 oz of water
12 pecks = 1 bushel 12 bushels = 1 barrel 12 barrels = 1 tun

DuQuense said:

Accully the old English/roman System is a universal type system like to metric, except it is base 12

12 inch= 1 foot 12 foot= 1 rod 12 rod =1 chain 12 chain = 1 mile =1728 ft = old roman mile
1 onzce = 1 cubic inch of water 1 pint = 1 pound= 12 oz of water
12 pecks = 1 bushel 12 bushels = 1 barrel 12 barrels = 1 tun

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But then the old system got complicated. Now the rod is 16'6", the pound is 16 oz, the chain is 4 rods, etc. And the old roman mile is actually 5000 feet.

Acully to old sytem didn't get complicated- whe had New systems imposed on top, like liters for bottles and pounds for dry. this is why there are two oznces in use [gold is still measured with the 12 oz pound].

It would be possible to come up with a invented measure for a TL but why bother, you would have to spend half your TL re explaning your Measurements. this is why most SciFi authors don't bother, even if they are describing a Alien race who never heard of the English or the Metrric Systems.

hi,
Concerning "natural measurement": A natural measurement to the next town up the road (10 miles/16 km) is not measured in distance at all, either English or Metric; it is 10 minutes away. No conversion necessary.Metric units are "human" or "natural" as well. The meter used to be defined as 10,000,000th of the distance from the equator to a pole, temperature makes much more sense than Fahrenheit (which I can't even spell), with water freezing at 0 degrees and boiling at 100.
The only reason we still use nautical miles in maritime and aviation measurement (which are different than statute miles) is because of the maritime adage "a minute (of arc) is a mile (at the equator), and the metric system of grads for arc measurements has not been widely adopted.

thanks...

Very good topic! I think several systems of significant prevalence is the most plausible development.
The current situation, with one system accepted almost everywhere on the globe, and another one in the largest national economy in the world, would be catcalled as ASB if invented in a TL ...

mary123 said:

hi,
Concerning "natural measurement": A natural measurement to the next town up the road (10 miles/16 km) is not measured in distance at all, either English or Metric; it is 10 minutes away. No conversion necessary.Metric units are "human" or "natural" as well. The meter used to be defined as 10,000,000th of the distance from the equator to a pole, temperature makes much more sense than Fahrenheit (which I can't even spell), with water freezing at 0 degrees and boiling at 100.
The only reason we still use nautical miles in maritime and aviation measurement (which are different than statute miles) is because of the maritime adage "a minute (of arc) is a mile (at the equator), and the metric system of grads for arc measurements has not been widely adopted.

thanks...

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Change that to three hours (that's how parasangs worked, IIRC).
Two hours with a donkey and cart.
A hour, maybe, with a horse and buggy (and/or a good cart); maybe a hour and a half even then.
Forty minutes if you are really lucky and/or have a good horse (and/or are a messenger).
Ten minutes? Only within the last several decades. I'd say 15 minutes even now.

Temperature? Reomur (sp?) is just as natural as Celsius is, arguably more so because the 80 ratio is also based on nature (something about how thermometers worked back then; basically, by how many thousandths the volume of ethanol grows). Though yes, Fahrenheit (you spelled it correctly, BTW) is not natural at all. Honestly, just use Kelvin (or if you really want to, Rankin which at least covers some of Fahrenheit's problems) - it's just that numbers are hard to distinguish... so one can (theoretically, mind you) take a Kelvin temperature and substract 200 to make it better.
(PS: The "degree" system chrispi mentioned would also be a good one.)

And as for length...
A meter as we know it is basically based on nothing, as are statute miles for that matter (and feet, and inches, and the rest of the Imperial system).
A nautical mile, OTOH, is as good a measurement as any, and certainly much more natural (one arc minute at the equator, basically); BTW, if the original definition of meter was followed through (i.e. 40000 km in the equator; I know it's actually meridian but IIRC IOTL equator is closer), there would've been exactly 1851 23/27 of those meters in a nautical mile, very close to the OTL value of "approximately 1852" (I'm not sure if there ever was a more exact figure).
As for feet, light-nanoseconds is actually a pretty good way to standartize a foot if it came late enough, IMHO; however, it is both really hard to reproduce and a little too short (remember, a French feet is longer than an English one; a light-nanosecond is thus shorter than both).
Alternately, if the nautical mile is already in the standard, having 6000 feet in a nautical mile would give us a foot of (approximately, accounting for uncertainties in the nautical mile definition) 30.86 OTL centimeters (12.15 OTL inches); that basically means 100 feet in an arc second. IIUC, those feet were IOTL used for the "knots" method of speed measuring from which the unit took the name - the distance between the knots was supposed to be 1/120 of a (nautical) mile as well as 50 feet, which would only be correct for those feet (it was probably more than compensated IOTL by the inevitable uncertainty in half-minute measuring, which of course was much more than this 1% error).



...So what, how?
January First-of-May

Fahrenheit does have some advantages. The degrees have a bit more precision than Celsius, which means less need for using decimal points. Also, most outdoor weather readings fall rather conveniently between 0 and 100. Temperatures outside this range are unusual throughout most of the temperate zone.

And, from personal experience, there is a significant difference in 'feel' between simply freezing at 32 and really cold at 0. If the temperature is 32, I'm still comfortable outside, dressed appropriately. When you get down below 15 or so, it's getting uncomfortable, but if you get down to 0, I know that if I'm going to be out there more than a couple of minutes, I need a face mask.

Although the 212 thing for boiling is a little odd.

Swan Station said:

Although the 212 thing for boiling is a little odd.

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That's a consequence of putting "human body temperature" at 100.

Now, as for alternate metric systems:

The meter is pretty arbitrary. It was designed based on the size of the Earth, but turned out somewhat inaccurate. A metric system devised under similar circumstances to ours could well be inaccurate by a different margin, but it couldn't be too far off from ours if given the same justification. It could, however, be defined as equivalent to an existing foot, particularly if a certain country's science dominates the civilization.

OTL's kilogram is based on a volume of water defined by the meter. It's pretty convenient for water to have a density of 1, and there doesn't seem to be any other compelling mass standard.

The second comes from a subdivision of the day. There doesn't seem to be any alternative division in use by the West, so we can expect the ATL second to be essentially the same as the OTL one.

I don't understand why the ampere is defined the way it is. There isn't much intuitive about electrical current, though, so it would probably end up defined much the way ours is (except with a possibly different meter). Maybe it would actually be equivalent to OTL's deciampere or so.

The kelvin would likely be essentially the same as IOTL.

The mole I would expect to also be similar, give or take a few powers of 10. Would there be an obstacle to defining the kilogram in terms of the mole, rather than vice versa?

The candela could be anything, I suppose. It could be defined by metric ratios of other units, and would probably in that case be significantly smaller than OTL's (or at least the *millicandela would).

So it all comes down to the meter. EDIT: I seem to have overestimated its uncertainty. Oh well.

Codae said:

That's a consequence of putting "human body temperature" at 100.

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Actually, it's a combination of that and the fact that they wanted 180 degrees between freezing and boiling. Which kind of starts to hint to me why they used 'angular' measurement terms for a unit of temperature.

The kelvin would likely be essentially the same as IOTL.

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Only if they base it off something similar to Celsius. Suppose they decide to set 100 degrees Kelvin based on 'human body temperature' ?

The mole I would expect to also be similar, give or take a few powers of 10. Would there be an obstacle to defining the kilogram in terms of the mole, rather than vice versa?

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The definition of mole is based on the amount of 'elementary entities' in a gram of Carbon-12. So, if the mass unit is different, or they choose Hydrogen instead of Carbon, the mole is quite different.