Talk about obsolete units

[kay]

Ah, but do you know when the lighthouse and the ship appeared on the Britannia side of the penny?  :tease:

No . . . but wasn't that the halfpenny?

The halfpenny had a ship as its main image. The penny at various times had either or both of a lighthouse and a ship on the distant horizon behind Britannia. A lighthouse and a ship during most of Victoria's reign (up to 1895), then just a lighthouse, then even that was dropped.

Come to think of it, the ship on the halfpenny was relatively recent; before that, the halfpenny also had Britannia.

Yes, it was a wren, not a robin, on the farthing. farthings were withdrawn while I was still a child, but I remember "halfpenny chews"

 

[kay]

Log tables, huh? I remember doing lots of calculations at school that involved certain numbers repeated over again, such as 1 atmosphere = 760 mm Hg . . . to the extent that decades later I still remember that log760 = 2.8808 (I think).

I hated log table calculations. So boring! Once I got to the stage of there being choice of questions in maths papers, I always ignored the ones containing phrases such as "...to 3 sig figs". Now children aren't taught logs as a calculation aid, you have a much better chance of explaining logarithms as a mathematical concept. And it's fundamental, because for so many things proportional difference it more important than absolute difference - that something is twice as large rather than 20cm longer.

When calculators first appeared in the mid '70s everyone wanted one that did square roots though nobody could actually find a use for them. 

That's reminded me that I needed to use an arctangent the other day.

 

[ChrisJC]

I was 70 in January and just come in from karate and doing an all day aikido on Sunday. Last weekend was dropping 100 ft pitches.

You can tell your 70, quoting pitches in ft !

I read the initial quote (which is unattributed in the op), and thought ' Christ, not another bloody Roy Fellows type on this forum' !!

Chris.

 

[graham]

When I first started drinking - Mild 1s-3d a pint, Bitter 1s-6d a pint. Unless you where in the 'best room', an extra penny to pay for the carpet!.

You spent a penny on the carpet??? :tease:

Be fair, we all did that at least once in the 70s.

 

[graham]

I hated log table calculations. So boring! Once I got to the stage of there being choice of questions in maths papers, I always ignored the ones containing phrases such as "...to 3 sig figs". Now children aren't taught logs as a calculation aid, you have a much better chance of explaining logarithms as a mathematical concept. And it's fundamental, because for so many things proportional difference it more important than absolute difference - that something is twice as large rather than 20cm longer.

 

[Roger W]

Hmmm, you might be right about the wren bograt.

'Twas a wren on the more recent farthings.
Checking my small change, I see I still have a 1934 (George V) one which has Britannia on.

 

[bograt]

Thinking about booklets of log tables, the reason for my avatar  is that I measured the stalactite in Pol-na-gollum  using a Suunto clino, and a tape measure, then borrowed a set of  tables from Sean O'Conner from Gussy's pub at Fisherstreet,- within 3 inches of the later  laser measurement -- Sean said I could keep the the booklet --still got it

 

[Fulk]

That's in Pol-ngollum? I thought that it must be Poll-an-Ionain; anyway, how big is it?

 

[bograt]

Sorry it is Poll-an-Ionain  - when in Ireland its easy to get confused between Ivy and Doves :-[

Need to get to the TSG logbook, late '70's to get the accurate measurements.. 

 

[Laurie]

I still have a pound's worth of farthings - all 960 of them 

 

[crickleymal]

I've just paid 50p for a 1918 copy of Fowlers Engineers Pocket Book complete with log tables, sine tables et al.

 

[cavermark]

At the Rana hole dig we used base 35 - the metal grid we used with a crowbar through to count kibbles had 35 holes in a row... "tea breaks only when you've done a unit!"

 

[Fulk]

I still have a pound's worth of farthings - all 960 of them 

I dare you to go to the pound shop and try to spend them.

 

[ChrisB]

In Douglas Adams' books, the Galaxy works in base 13.

6 times 9 = 42

 

[Laurie]

I still have a pound's worth of farthings - all 960 of them 

I dare you to go to the pound shop and try to spend them.

They'd welcome me. They're a lot of weight in solid copper. 

 

[robjones]

solid copper

Bronze - unless they are pre-1860

 

[Laurie]

solid copper

Bronze - unless they are pre-1860

Even better 

 

[NewStuff]

I've the advantage of being bilingual. For the first ten years of my life I worked in feet, inches and old money, and then on to metric and new money.
I'm only 51 years young, or old, depending on your point of view.

I regularly switch between the two, depending on where the customer is from, Euro (metric) or US (Imperial).

I'm 36, and work in Aero engineering.

 

[Laurie]

I'm 72. I work in lb/ft not bloomin' newtons 

 

[kay]

I'm 72. I work in lb/ft not bloomin' newtons 

You had a narrow escape! I'm not much younger than you and we were taught in newtons.

We were in that strange era when Imperial, kms and cgs were all milling around with no clear winner. If I remember rightly, Nuffield A level Physics was in kms, whereas Applied Maths was still Imperial. I guess that's why my generation are so comfortable with mixed units, as in "2m length of 4 x 2 [inches]"

And all of us are expected to marry the 1km gridlines on an OS map with the miles on the road signs.