Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!ecsv24
From: ecsv24@castle.ed.ac.uk (J Bradfield)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: ruler.ps - an inch/point ruler of your very own
Message-ID: <1770@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 23 Jan 90 15:10:05 GMT
References: <21772@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> <1990Jan14.180821.18711@trigraph.uucp> <cZgXrfy00VswM_8qsa@andrew.cmu.edu> <17668@rpp386.cactus.org> <126@macuni.mqcc.mq.oz> <SPQR.90Jan22081257@drake.ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Reply-To: ecsv24@castle.ed.ac.uk (J Bradfield)
Organization: Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh U
Lines: 14

In article <SPQR.90Jan22081257@drake.ecs.soton.ac.uk> 
spqr@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Sebastian Rahtz) writes:

>is it merely my ignorance that makes me think the Napoleonic
>government invented the metre, and that it is a fraction of the
>circumference of the globe? did someone redefine it later in terms of
>the speed of light? 


They did; it was (1/4E7); someone did. If I recall, the metre was in
turn 1E-7 of the distance from the North Pole to longtide 0, lat 0;
the length of a platinum/iridium standard metre; a number of
wavelengths of some light emitted by krypton; and the distance
travelled by light in a certain time.