Posted on 09/19/2017 4:01:46 PM PDT by BBell
The proposal, conceived by a bunch of pointy-headed Parisian philosophes, sounded brilliant: A universal system of measurement, derived from decimal-based units and identified by a shared set of prefixes. It would end the era of merchants buying goods according to one unit, selling in another, and pocketing the ill-gotten profit. It would simplify scientific calculations and enable the free exchange of ideas around the world. It was an enlightened system for an enlightened time. If only the French scientists could persuade other countries to adopt it.
But pirates have a way of ruining even the best-laid plans.
In 1793, botanist and aristocrat Joseph Dombey set sail from Paris with two standards for the new "metric system": a rod that measured exactly a meter, and a copper cylinder called a "grave" that weighed precisely one kilogram. He was journeying all the way across the Atlantic to meet Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson - a fellow fan of base-ten systems who, Dombey hoped, would help persuade Congress to go metric.
Then a storm rolled in, knocking Dombey's ship off course. The unlucky academic was washed into the Caribbean - and straight into the clutches of British pirates. Technically, they were "privateers" because they were tacitly sanctioned by His Majesty's government so long as they only raided foreign ships. But it amounted to the same thing. The brigands took Dombey hostage and looted his equipment. The luckless scientist died in prison shortly after his capture; his belongings were auctioned off to the highest bidders.
France sent a second emissary to promote the metric system. But by the time the replacement arrived, America had a new secretary of state, Edmund Randolph, who apparently didn't care much for measurement. As the rest of the world adopted the metric system, the U.S. continued to bumble around with
(Excerpt) Read more at nola.com ...
Good one!
I have an accumulation of tools I have bought over the last two decades, and I haven't bought any new mechanics tools in the last 10 years.
I've bought from Sears and I've bought from various other brick and mortar stores, but I always had to go back and buy those two sizes separately. Perhaps someone decided to do something about it.
I don't buy from Amazon, (Amazon corporate supports too many things i'm against) but I do buy from Ebay.
(a de facto international standard with no metric equivalents[citation needed])
So that's rather amusing that the Europeans with their Metric system still use the Imperial standard based drives on their sockets. That's a real hoot!
Well, at least you know how to work with your God-given hands (not surer if they are imperial or metric)!
More so than I like lately. Everyone and their dog wants me to fix their Car, Truck, or whatever.
Yeah, metric... based on tens... that’s why the circumference of the Earth is 40,000 km.
There’s nothing backward about using what we use. The scientific literature already is riddled with metric system measurements, and there’s nothing wrong with that, either.
The UK has used the metric system for quite a long time now, even adapting their legacy currency system (circa 1974. Somewhere around here I have a half penny coin, big bugger, copper, from before the conversion; the “haypenny” began as, literally, half of a copper penny, but became a coin in its own right at some point). But people in Britain still buy and sell commodities like flour and seed and so forth, and reference their body weight, using “stone”, which is 14 pounds, and that particular measurement doesn’t/didn’t survive in the US, AFAIK.
Yeah, that’s why the ESA landed crews on the Moon, and we never did. ;^)
My dad bought a set of metric sockets for some piece of yard machinery, or maybe I bought it for a bike I had; I found that 12mm and 1/2 inch were basically interchangeable.
The op-ed (it’s not an article, because of the bias) appeared, not surprisingly, in the Washington Post first. See, if we weren’t so benighted, we’d be voting in single payer, tear down all statues, burn the US flag, save the Earth from global warming, ditch the first and second amendments, switch to vegetarianism, unilaterally disarm...
see, that’s why we need a “like” button like on FB. :^)
Yes, the way it was written smelled like an agenda to me too.
3/4” & 19mm are closer percentage wise.
6 point sockets can stretch a dimension farther than 12 pt.
Ok...did you have a better explanation?
In-deed. And if only had a pick up you could move them also! I was never a pro mechanic and the most extensive work I did was replacing head gaskets back in the 70's, yet I have some interesting stores to tell, by God's grace (like resuscitating my dad's work car which I completely sunk in a golf course lagoon), but I am sure you must have some also.
Nowadays I do fix (usually) bikes for free in this densely packed city with lots of kids, and thank God I can do something to help others, but few want to learn yet.
I actually posted this article for the historical aspect. I did not intend for it to be a referendum on the metric system.
I just did a blown head gasket a couple of months ago, and now my son's friends car has been presented to me with the same problem. I told them that they can do the work, and i'll just show them what to do. Fixing a blown head gasket is a pain in the @$$, because it usually warps the head, and so you have to get the head reworked.
Fortunately for them, I happen to have an old junk car that I was going to haul off for scrap anyways, and it happens to use the same engine as my son's friends car. It has a bad rod bearing/worn crankshaft problem, and i'm not going to fix it, so there is a spare known good head they can use.
Nowadays I do fix (usually) bikes for free in this densely packed city with lots of kids, and thank God I can do something to help others, but few want to learn yet.
You've got that right. Person after person wants their car fixed, but none of them want to learn how to fix it themselves. They all want to drop it in my lap and then run away. Well i've made it clear to them that i'm not going to do that, and if their car isn't worth their attention, it is certainly not worth my attention.
Nobody wants to learn anything nowadays. Nobody wants to take any sort of control over their own lives. There is no more "can do" attitude in this generation.
But you must have expected responses, which is what ya got. :^)
My first blown head gasket (in my 63 Tbird) was due to using heavy duty cleanser without tightening the head bolts as instructed or using the neutralizer. Did it more than once,
I sold the Tbird for 150 as is, and the second time a mechanic with a broken arm told me what do to (take off carb linkage, intake manifold etc.) and I used a 3/8 drive Craftsman ratchet with a pipe to sequentially tighten the bolts.
Fixing a blown head gasket is a pain in the @$, because it usually warps the head, and so you have to get the head reworked.
I think they have thick ones which may help deal with that, along with some Permatex.
Fortunately for them, I happen to have an old junk car that I was going to haul off for scrap anyways,
Only going for about 150 around here for old sedans.
Nobody wants to learn anything nowadays. Nobody wants to take any sort of control over their own lives. There is no more "can do" attitude in this generation.
Overall it seems about the only ones are older folks, and some working immigrants who had to learn to make do with they had. But even their kids are too often more concerned with Facebook and vids. Not their fault, but you do not have to lose kids to the culture.
Our "facebook" was stringing telephone wire (my brother asked the lineman for it it when they put up new tel. wires and they gave it to him) to my neighbors house aprox 200' away, and then thru a walkway btwn other neighbors property (they thought it was interesting but allowed it) and across a road over to my friends house. I used a train set transformer for DC power, and "rang" them by using some AC power to make a noise.
Then there was the cheap crystal set which I could get both AM and Radio Moscow (I was not on their side though).
Thank God. Glad i was not raised with the plethora of pervasive persuasive perversion of today. But we can use the instrumentation for God and for good.
On those older engines, not only did you have to torque the head bolts to the recommended spec, you had to retorque them after so many miles because they would stretch from pressure and heat.
All the new engines use "torque to yield" bolts. You only have to torque them once when you put them on. It is for this reason that new head bolts are always included in a head gasket kit for newer engines. You cannot reuse your old head bolts.
I think they have thick ones which may help deal with that, along with some Permatex.
Another major concern for blown head gaskets is cracked heads. I know of several engines that will virtually guaranteed suffer a crack in the head if you get the engine hot enough to blow the head gasket.
When I send a head to the machine shop to have it rebuilt, they verify for me whether or not it is even worth using. Sometimes it isn't, and another one must be found in a salvage yard.
Overall it seems about the only ones are older folks, and some working immigrants who had to learn to make do with they had. But even their kids are too often more concerned with Facebook and vids. Not their fault, but you do not have to lose kids to the culture.
I think making do with what you had teaches both responsibility and a need to work to get what you want. I think many of these children now days have had it too easy, and it will be to their detriment at some point in the future.
Our "facebook" was stringing telephone wire (my brother asked the lineman for it it when they put up new tel. wires and they gave it to him) to my neighbors house aprox 200' away, and then thru a walkway btwn other neighbors property (they thought it was interesting but allowed it) and across a road over to my friends house. I used a train set transformer for DC power, and "rang" them by using some AC power to make a noise.
Sounds like fun. I never had a friend that lived close enough to try anything like that.
Then there was the cheap crystal set which I could get both AM and Radio Moscow (I was not on their side though).
I did do the crystal radio set though. That was fun.
Thank God. Glad i was not raised with the plethora of pervasive persuasive perversion of today. But we can use the instrumentation for God and for good.
You can blame the media and the Universities for that stuff nowadays. They have made it popular and acceptable.
You mean like my Dad's old Ford 390 which ran liker a top but burned 2 qts of oil every 40 miles (to work in the shipyard as a welder). So he bought a whole barrel at 0.10 a qt, and it was my job to check the level on the engine each day and put the oil in. Years later I had one that smoked so bad I added some gear lube to it. Sure did smell.
But when my dad was young his friends and him somehow converted a gas engine to diesel. Policeman pulled them over for excessive smoke one day and said, "Burns a little oil doesn't it?" The driver replied, "We hope so!"
not only did you have to torque the head bolts to the recommended spec, you had to retorque them after so many miles because they would stretch from pressure and heat.
Later on I got a torque wrench, but thanks for the updated info.
I think making do with what you had teaches both responsibility and a need to work to get what you want. I think many of these children now days have had it too easy, and it will be to their detriment at some point in the future.
Very true. Average 1.7 kids and waiting till 27 years old (for white, non-Hispanic at least) to have the first one is part of that i think, and then overall raising the most Biblically illiterate and morally confused generation America has ever seen. But when a nation casts off the word of God to follow deception that is what you have. May all give their sins and life to the risen Lord who died and rose again to save them!
Uh... it’s the basis of definitions. But actually, it still does NOT mean the meter isn’t arbitrary; it just explains where we get the other measurements from.
A meter was originally either 1/10,000,000 of the distance from the equator to the North pole, or, nearly identically, the distance a pendulum whose half-period is 1 second swings. As more precise measurements were necessary, an absolute, universal constant was needed, so they use the speed of light traveling through a vacuum in 1/299,792nd of a second. (Just missed 1/300,000th of a second!)
Why 1/10,000,000? Probably to keep in similar to a yard. Indeed, the earliest estimations of a meter was 38 inches, because inches were slightly bigger than they are, and the distance was also measured slightly inaccurately.
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