3 ms·
Some things are traditionally measured in inches even worldwide, like screen diagonals or pipe diameters or, as you have noticed, mil grids. But in any other ca
by plugnburn 11y ago
Some things are traditionally measured in inches even worldwide, like screen diagonals or pipe diameters or, as you have noticed, mil grids. But in any other cases, seeing those feet, yards, miles and pounds in some internet resources presumably made for _international_ audience annoys the heck out of me. In our country (tip: Ukraine), not any ruler or tape measure even has inch marks, yet they are optional here when centimetres are a must. But as soon as I see a video about something "that's 36.5 feet tall", I have to run a conversion to find out what is it in metres. Pretty much the same as the case with some foreign and non-universal character encoding (when everything I see is just garbled letters and/or squares).
P.S. And yes, my ruler is made from aluminium, not aluminum.
- kazinator 11y agoAluminium is an English word used in the UK. Both the words "aluminium" and "aluminum" are British inventions. Both derive from "alumina", a name given in the 1700's to aluminum oxide. That word comes from the Latin "alumen", from which the word "alum" is also derived. "Aluminum" was coined first, by English chemist Sir Humphry Davy, in 1808. He first called it "alumium", simply by adding "-ium" to "alum" (as in, the elemental base of alum, just like "sodium" is the elemental base of soda), and then added "n" to make "aluminum". In 1812, British editors replaced Davy's new word with "aluminium", keeping Davy's "n", but restoring the "-ium" suffix which coordinated with the other elements like potassium. North Americans stuck with Davy's original "aluminum". In Slovakia, we have a nice word for it: hliník, derived from hlina (clay).