Imperial measurements.

[Bill Morrison]

REFRESHER COURSE from my wee book of tables. John in OZ, note the IRISH mile. Now you know why it took longer to reach your destination.
Bill.

[happy daze john in oz]

That explains it all , thank you for that.

But remember it was the bloody Frogs that brought in decimilation to UK, but VAT means it is harder to avoid tax. it gets you at some point.

A bit to add to the table

At 33 feet underwater you are at one atmosphere, below that it becomes two./
At that point oxygen alone will become toxic and can kill you.

[Des Taff Jenkins]

The young ones will adapt, it is the old ones who find change difficult. I still have my slide rules from the days before pocket calculators and computers, (good for when the plug finally gets pulled on domestic electricity supplies.) I also feel we should go back to degrees Fahrenheit, it is a far more flexible scale than Celsius, personally, I never changed over to deg C.

Austin

Hi Austin.
They can change what they like but it was still bloody minus7 here last night and freezing
Cheers Des

[happy daze john in oz]

Des, what is wrong with you, only minus 7, to some in the Artic that would be a heat wave.

But it must be getting cold, only 23 in the Alice yesterday, but a balmy 32 in Darwin.
You and me live in the wrong places I reckon.

[j.sabourn]

#21. Being a bit pedantic here John a nautical mile is not exactly 6080 feet as I was advised by the principle of the Tasmanian nautical college on New Year’s Eve. Think it was 1998 whilst on the third course of dinner and the fourth course of wine at his house in Launceston . He quoted a figure of something like 6079 feet 9 and a half inches which today I have no doubt he was correct as must have worked it out technically. Navigators will know that a nautical mile is equal to 1 minute of latitude. The Earth is not round , and those who think it is are working under a mishaprehension , however it is not flat either as some thought centuries ago , and believe those still swinging in trees still do. It is an elliptical shape with its polar diameter approx. 27 nautical miles less than its equatorial diameter . So a nautical mile is going to very slightly vary depending on what latitude you are in. An average of all these measurements has or was agreed and for uniformity 6080 feet was agreed on. But the average is apparently a few inches different to the mathematically minded. You could say the same about cables there being 10 to a nautical mile . But being rude or is the word crude seamen they are accurate enough for our purposes . Cheers yo ho ho and a bottle of rum , and a drink and toast to the Monarch tomorrow. JS......

For non seafarers a bit more just in case of confusion a cable for distance purposes is 600 feet.
A cable on the anchor is 15 fathoms which is 90 feet.
JS

[J Gowers]

Think I will join in with this thread, who actually goes shiopping these days and asked for items by weight it is all prepacked, or mostly, so it does not make a jot of difference if your prepacked cheese, cold meat etc has a weight in ox and Lbs or grams no one looks at it or at least I dont. I statred my appenticship ashore in 1969 and i can remeber on the wall of the workshop there was a psoter about changing to SI measurements and all through my life at sea in collage and on rigs and ashore we used Si units. T

[thomas michael]

hi Bill Morrison
good evening, i was left wondering if the irish mile listed in your notes from your book of tables was calculated by a one legged irish man, as i believe this most likely caused the extended length he was measuring, as it is obvious to me, because he would have had to hop instead of pacing the distance of the mile,
paddy

[J Gowers]

Think I will join in with this thread, who actually goes shopping these days and asks for items by weight it is all prepacked, or mostly, so it does not make a jot of difference if your prepacked cheese, cold meat etc has a weight in ozs and Lbs or grams no one looks at the weight of the package or at least I dont. I started my appenticeship ashore in 1969 and I can remember on the wall of the workshop there was a poster about changing to SI measurements and all through my life at sea in collage and on rigs and ashore we used SI units. Are we really going back the things like British Thermal Units whatever they were. Buying petrol in Litres and having signposts in miles is fine in the UK lets just leave it all as it is. As for going back to 12 pence to the shilling come on get real.

Sent my last post too early by accident

[j.sabourn]

#22 That’s where saturation diving comes into play , where you are brought down to the depth you are going to be working at and left in a chamber waiting to go down in a bell. To get to that depth you don’t breathe oxygen you breath a mixture of gases including helium being one of the predominant ones. Air divers seldom go below a 100 feet. They may live in the chambers usually 3 at a time , I think they would consider it a luxury if one was female.
Then we could all watch them on the tv monitors . In the North Sea they were paid by the minute when in saturation so you can imagine they had a very short working year , a lot spent a lot of time in their accomodation purchased in Spain and the South of France , it also saved on the tax . JS

#27. Must have been the same 1 legged Irishman who gave me 3 lessons on an Automatic car 31 years ago to get a fast Australian licence , needless to say he promoted the automatic licence simply because he didn’t have a second leg for the clutch pedal. He also managed to have a collision with another car when I wasn’t driving thank goodness. Think the police officer who took me for the test wasn’t too interested in my driving skills as was more interested in radio frequencies and distress calls, he must have thought I was a wireless operator , he was going up for his private aircraft pilots licence. One bumps into the Irish all over the world. JS .

[j.sabourn]

#29 Nearly as bad as the changes to barometric pressure Marian, started off in inches ,then millibars and the last time I looked was hectopascals. JS .