Britain once forgot how long an inch is
2,909,461
2020-07-27に共有
Filmed safely: www.tomscott.com/safe/
There's a correction to this video: the fraction on screen at 00:49 should be 1/299792458. Looks like I copied and pasted an extra 1 and didn't realise it. Apologies. You can see all the corrections for this channel at www.tomscott.com/corrections/
Story research by Jess Jewell
SOURCES:
Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Consider the Steps to Be Taken for Restoration of the Standards of Weight and Measure, 1841, books.google.co.uk/books?id=4xVSAAAAcAAJ
A Collection of the General Public Statutes, 1855, books.google.co.uk/books?id=UDCaqwCgBKcC
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コメント (21)
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There's a correction to this video: the fraction on screen at 00:49 should be 1/299792458. Looks like I copied and pasted an extra 1 and didn't realise it. Apologies. You can see all the corrections for this channel at www.tomscott.com/corrections/
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When parliament burnt down, the losses were immeasurable
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The biggest surprise in this video for me was the Subway sandwich actually being a foot long.
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I love how he goes "Is that in frame, I cant tell" while it is literally most perfect shot he could have created at that moment.
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"By the researches of scientific men, doubts were thrown on the accuracy~" I like that phrase, now i'm just going to have to find excuses to use it
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So Americans ARE actually using the metric system without realising? I swear, give em 25.4mm and they'll take 1.609km.
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luckily in the U.S a foot is standardized by the footlong at subway
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As a machinist, what has always fascinated me is how machinery (whether in Imperial or Metric units) can be made accurate to such small measurements. For example, our CNC machines are considered accurate and repeatable to .0001" (or .00254 mm). So, there must be some machine out there that can hold a tolerance tighter than .0001" in order to make a machine that can repeat that small of a measurement with accuracy. So, how do they make THAT machine accurate? (and so on & so on...)
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And to this day no one on tinder or grindr knows how long an inch is...
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Only Tom would measure the length of a sandwich using a brass plaque.
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Always used to catch up with a friend at that plaque - I never forgot where to metre
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Tom Scott is one of those YouTube gems you come across every once in a while. You get a sense of satisfaction from his videos
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"At some point it has to stop." Nah, it's calibration all the way up.
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For those 21 years, men were very generous with their 'measurements'.
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"the US capitol building is older than the parliment building behind me" How many other lies have I been told by the Jedi council?
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Having to hire a group of scientists to fix the entire country's measurement system because they messed up, then proceeding to ignore almost all of their recommendations except the quick fix to the most glaring mistake in favour of business as usual, is a perfect summary of the British political system.
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- There has to be an organisation, who's job it is to say: "You don't need to calibrate any more" - * sad Garrus noises *
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I can only imagine what else has been measured against that plaque.
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"Why yes, it's 10 inches, and you can't prove me wrong!"
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The British gun trade standardized on their own Enfield inch in the 1840s, which wasn't the same as the Imperial inch that was standardized 10 years later. The Australians found out the hard way that an inch isn't always an inch when they bought tooling from Pratt and Whitney in the US to make their guns and discovered that screws wouldn't interchange with the British made guns.
