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From: karn@jupiter..bellcore.com (Phil R. Karn)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics,rec.ham-radio
Subject: Re: New subject: Tesla vs gauss, and other obscure units
Message-ID: <18188@bellcore.bellcore.com>
Date: 10 Nov 89 23:32:51 GMT
References: <1914@sactoh0.UUCP> <28601@buckaroo.mips.COM> <1989Oct29.174631.12960@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <1989Oct29.224736.2838@utzoo.uucp> <851@ariel.unm.edu>
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Reply-To: karn@thumper.bellcore.com (Phil R. Karn)
Organization: Bell Communications Research, Inc
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>Only in the past ten years have nanofarads come into use

So far the unit seems to be most popular in Europe. Unfortunately, it's
still almost unknown in the US. It's so much easier to say "10 nF" (a
common enough value) instead of .01uF or 10000 pF.

How many people do you know who know the peta- and exa-
>prefixes, and the femto- and atto- prefixes? (Admittedly not useful to most
>of us, unless you're measuring the circumference of Pluto's orbit in electronic
>radii....;^)

Some of these larger prefixes are becoming useful when describing the
size of digital databases, or the number of bits you can send over a
fiber in a day, or the average age of the US ham population. :-)

Actually, the differences between cgs and MKS are trivial in comparison
to the *real* problem, which is the brain-damaged English system of
units. It's a considerable embarassment to me as an American that we're
still not metric. I for one would love to take all the money that's
currently being wasted on "OSI migration" in the US and put it into
going metric. (See? I'm not an American with an NIH syndrome. When the
Europeans -- even the French -- come up with an idea that's actually
*better* than what we're already using, I'm all in favor of converting.)

Phil