Decimal Inch versus Decimal Foot

[mklotz]

Yet another confusion of the inferial measurement system. A new opportunity to make mistakes. Whenever is this country going to start using the metric system?

It reminds me a bit of the surveyor's 'chain' which is a puzzling* 66 feet long but, in what I suppose was a half-hearted attempt to make computation easier, was divided into 100 'links'. Thus the 'link' becomes a so-simple-to-work-with 66*12/100 = 7.92 inches.

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* It may be another mish-mash of units. The mile is divided into eight furlongs, an example of Americans preoccupation with powers of two. But they divided the furlong into ten chains so each chain is 660/10 = 66 feet because, deep down, they knew that powers of ten made computation easier.