From: John Cowan (jcowan@reutershealth.com)
Date: Tue Jul 29 2003 - 09:57:03 EDT
Karljürgen Feuerherm scripsit:
> Well, in either case, the original point falls to bits. Neither of the two
> countries match the original descriptor of 'the at-the-time most progressive
> nation on Earth'.
In terms of reform of this kind, the U.S. certainly does match, thanks to
Thomas Jefferson, who liberated the world pounds, shillings, and pence
(and their analogues). Unfortunately, his decimal-based measurement
system didn't have the quantifying prefixes of the metric system (which
did not yet exist), and it was entirely Jefferson's idea with no support
from other scientists or countries. So it failed, and the U.S. was
stuck with the Fred Flintstone Memorial Measurement system by default
(it has never been adopted officially).
> Nor does any other. It's simply much too simplistic a statement.
In general, yes. But this is a restricted context.
-- Real FORTRAN programmers can program FORTRAN John Cowan in any language. --Allen Brown jcowan@reutershealth.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Jul 29 2003 - 10:38:53 EDT