From: Sasa (sasa.radojcic_at_xs4all.nl)
Date: Sun May 02 2004 - 14:01:40 PDT
>>
>> For all the metric system's regularity, precise definition of units
>> and ease of conversion between units of the same measurement, isn't it
>> odd that time has not successfully been "metricized" !?
Actually, it's not odd.
Time is not as critical to people as a unified measurement system for
trading goods.
Back in the old times every country, county, village, quarters, even
different tradingorganisations within one building had different
opinions what a foot, thumb, whatever was. And that was not good for
trading goods. It was quite a hassle to trade in a proper way ("I
ordered 10 pounds" "you got 10 amsterdam pounds" "I meant 10 rotterdam
pounds" - fill in for amsterdam and rotterdam any city you want,
anywhere in Europe).
Not to mention the difficulties for science. How can you exchange
knowledge if you measure in different ways (One very nice example: you
all remember the Concorde, right? Well, it was a british-french
invention. The Russians stole the plans for building it, but since they
had a different measurement system they couldn't build it so they had
to invent some solutions to the problems they encountered. E.g., the 2
small extra wings in the nose of the russian version.)
So, I believe it was Napoleon said to his scientists: go and invent a
universal, useful system. And they did. Every country in Europe
Napoleon invaded adapted the metric system. And the countries witch
where not invaded also took it over. First, because France was a very
powerful economic force (hm, sounds familiar ;-8 ), and second: the
metric system was working well.
However, one country did not adopt the new system, Great Britain. And
for one reason only: it was a french invention. This is the reason why
Canada and the USA have different systems: Canada has a french origin,
the USA have a british origin.
As for time, there was no economical or scientific reason to change
anything. Plus the current time-units are all related to religion, and
of all things that is the most difficult thing to change.
But be not mistaken, time as we know it does not exist so very long,
many things have been settled just 100 or so years ago.
As I said in the beginning, time was not as critical, but when
necessary an alien timesystem was forced on a country if necessary.
How do you think the chinese measured their time BEFORE the americans
came? Again, a strong economic power forced it's owen system on
somebody else (hm, sounds famliar ;-8 ).
There a quite some nice books about these subjects (time and
measurement systems), read them, it's quite interesting.
And who knows what will happen when Earth will be conquered, maybe we
will start counting in claws and tails.
Greetings
Sascha
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