Ultimate digital caliper for modelers.

1973 is recent?

Most rulers sold here in Canada are metric

Yes, most rulers destined for school desks have imperial on one face, metric on the other, and the steel rules in hardware and engineering shops also have both, but imperial in 1/8 - 1/128 increments, which don't readily translate to 24ths.

Reply to
Greg Procter
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Reply to
funfly3

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HTH

Hey thanks!

Reply to
Greg Procter

Sure. I can still remember that year, so it must be recent. :-)

You might find an architectural scale (you know, those triangular thingies) in a pawnshop or junque shop, er, I mean antique store. Just don't pay a junque price for it. :-) Or maybe you can make contact with an architect's office that still has some lying around in dusty drawers somewhere.

What about a US O scale ruler, that's 1/4" scale - just right, for the inch marks on it will be 1/2" in /124th scale. Puffeck!

HTH

Reply to
Wolf

Got to admit it's tough for me to separate 1972/1973/1974 memories now -

1974 I bought my first house and gained a box-room for a railway, but the previous couple of years tend to merge ...

That's where I've been hunting - no luck in over a year.

Good point! I knew that but ... Guess I just never thought of the yank odd scale.

Reply to
Greg Procter

"That would work, but we went metric thirty years ago and architects/draughtsmen went CAD 10/15 years ago so I've found nothing around NZ. I'm sure I owned one years ago but tossed it out in one of my moves before I added 1:24 scale to my collection of scales.

Unfortunately when a country goes metric old plans don't update themselves. :-( "

That's what happens when you get in bed with the French bastards and their new fangled measuring system. You get screwed.royally. ;-)

Reply to
newyorkcentralfan

Yeah, but even the imperial system isn't perfect as the American ounce, quart, and gallon are unique sizes.

It really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things as 1/4":1' can be drawn in metric at 1:50 and yield approximate sizes. For that matter, so can railway scales: G = 1:25, O = 1:50, HO = 1:100. Thus, one wouldn't have to mix measurement systems such as HO at 3.5mm:12" to make 87.1:1 which I find hilarious. But, that would be too simple for those with Mensa qualities.

Cheers, John

Reply to
John Fraser

Better being screwed up by the French with a logical measuring system than by Brits and yanks with a measuring system using someone's thumb width, barleycorns, shoes and lengths of chains!

Reply to
Greg Procter

and train tracks that are based on the width of a pair of horse's arse's

Reply to
funfly3

"and train tracks that are based on the width of a pair of horse's arse's"

I was under the impression that the Roman chariot was to blame for that little quirk....

Reply to
+GF+
+GF+ wrote:

it was see below blatantly copied from the web The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4ft, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number !! Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US railroad Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing, Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have bee used ever since And the ruts in the roads? Roman chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing The United States standard railroad gauge of 4ft, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for the Imperial Roman war chariot And bureaucracies live forever......

So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's arse came up with it, you may be exactly right. because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends or two war horses Now the twist to the story.......

When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on a launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters or SRB for short The SRB are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through the tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses' behinds So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's arse and you thought being a HORSE'S ARSE wasn't important!!!

Reply to
funfly3

Actually I currently only see Americans using the old system :-)

Marc

Reply to
Marc Heusser

"Marc Heusser" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@news.unizh.ch...

I prefer the simpler metric system, but eschew condemning _any_ system.

No matter how hard we may strive to justify a "basis" for any system, they are, after all, arbitrary by the choice of the men who use them. There exists no universal physically-based measurement system - nor can there until we understand all of physics and the universe - so why cry "foul" if someone chooses to use a system you don't like that's no more or less arbitrary than the one you do like.

LLoyd

Reply to
Lloyd E. Sponenburgh

I just prefer the SI-system, as I do not have to remember all those conversion factors. Or would you prefer to use roman numerals for calculations :-)?

Marc

Reply to
Marc Heusser

Well, having been brought up with both, and having bought all kinds of things measured in both systems, and having lived through an incomplete conversion to metric here in Canada, my considered conclusion is that the old system is more consumer friendly. Why? Precisely because its measures are based on the human body.

And human drinking capacity. Have you noticed that "standard" metric drinks are sized very close to the old measures, with some rounding off here and there? Eg, a half pint is 227ml - the standard soft drink in Europe is now 250ml, which is about one tablespoon more.

There's also the convenience of estimating quantities that give us results within a half unit or so. For a carpet, for example, a centimetre is too small, and a metre too large, but a foot is just about right.

The usual argument in favour of the metric system is that it's "rational", because all its units are related to each other by powers of

10.*** Well, so what? The hard fact is that most people never convert units into each other -- they never need to do so. People need units that are easy to imagine in terms of use or consumption. It's no accident that in Austria when I were a lad sliced meat was bought by the "Deka", ie the 10gm unit. It's rather small, being less than half an ounce, but it's in the right range - a slice of ham weighed about a Deka, depending how the butcher set the slicing machine. On a recent trip to Austria I shopped at a farmer's market. I noticed that people asked for "about 1/8 kilo" of cheese, etc, not for 125gm. Interesting, eh?

I have nothing against the metric system, I use it a lot, actually. But I do get testy with people who believe that it's inherently superior to other systems of measurement. It isn't. It's just different. The same goes for the imperial system. Use either for what it's good for, and ignore it otherwise.

HTH

Reply to
Wolf

"Marc Heusser" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@news.unizh.ch...

That's JUST my point. Were I facile in the use of roman numerals, it would (probably) be just as natural and easy for me to use it that way as it is for any other measurement system with which I was fully competent. It really doesn't matter, so long as it's 'standardized' and well-documented.

LLoyd

Reply to
Lloyd E. Sponenburgh

My old physics professor said: "There are two mensuration systems: the metric and the barbaric."

But to get back to the topic that started this amazingly long thread. Us modelers use a large variety of sources for our models: kits, plans, sometimes very old documentation (that may use the stone-furlong-fortnight mensuration system.). Kits and plans come in an amazing variety of scales:

1:4, 1:5, 1:6, 1:8, 1:12, 1:16, 1:24, 1:25, 1:32, 1:35, 1:48, 1:50, 1:75, 1:96, 1:100, ...1:720 ..and probably a whole bunch more that I've missed. The base may be either in feet and inches, or metric. Our materials, today, are usually either metric or English or both. So, let's say I have some small brass strips sized in inches, and I'm building a 1:75 scale model with metric plans. I want to know in an instant if that strip is the size I want...without dragging out a calculator, without having an RS-232 or other cable winding itself like a cobra around my delicate model, without a blue-tooth transmitter dragging my wrist down, and without having to go to the other room to look at the computer screen because my shop is not a healthy place for computers. I want to do that conversion in an instant. Apply my caliper to the material and instantly read the scale dimension in the proper units. The ultimate digital caliper for modelers would do just that.

Boris

Reply to
Boris Beizer

I don't think the basis for the system is the point. That is obviously going to be arbitrary. It's the conversion process that makes the American system ludicrous. 12 inches to a foot, 3 feet to a yard, 1,760 yards to a mile. Great if you have a calculator or an autistic savant handy.

With metrics the conversions are all based on factors of ten. Makes it really easy, even for children with very little knowledge of arithmetic.

Working just in your head, figure the number of centimeters in 8346 kilometers. Now try figuring out how many inches there are in 8346 miles as quickly. It's like doing long division with Roman numerals.

Reply to
Spender

It wasn't easy to calculate in, which is why Arabic won out.

Reply to
Steve Caple

When you get into thermal conductivity units and that sort of thing, mixed Imperial units can get pretty ugly. BTU*in/(ft^2*h*°F)?

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

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