Re: A weighty subject

[paul o johnson <pojhome@FLASH.NET>]

Glenn Knapp wrote:

> I wonder if the French also thought that when it was forced down their throats.
> The English and Americans had inches and feet, but how did the French measure
> length  before the revolution?
>
> Back in my old Navy days when I was a navigator, we used nautical miles as our
> standard distance.  A nautical mile is 2 000 yards.  A degree of latitude is 60
> nuatical miles, so a
> minute of latitude is 1 nautical mile or 2 000 yards.  This was very convienient
> as charts would always have the latitude scales printed across them.  It was very
> easy to take any distance that you measured with dividers, set it on the vertical
> scale along the edge of the chart and read
> off the distance.  Meters, sadly, don't work like that.  As a consequence, the
> sailors don't want to give up yards for meters.

I'm with you, Glenn, I've been a pleasure sailor for 50 years. As an ASA sailing
instructor, I teach classes in both Coastal Nav and Celestial Nav, so I'm very
familiar with the relationships  between minutes of latitude, nautical miles, and
yards.

My earlier question had to do with how the French came up with the metric system.
It seems to me that if they had done it right, there would be 100 degrees of
latitude and 100 million meters between equator and pole. Then 1 degree of latitude
would be a million meters, so 1 meter would be 1 microdegree. Using a chart to plot
a course or make a fix in that world would be as simple as converting kilometers to
meters.

poj