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From: gjerawlins@watdaisy.UUCP (Gregory J.E. Rawlins)
Newsgroups: net.puzzle
Subject: Re: using a barometer to ... (pointer needed)
Message-ID: <7220@watdaisy.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 1-May-85 03:32:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: watdaisy.7220
Posted: Wed May  1 03:32:55 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 1-May-85 07:27:48 EDT
Reply-To: gjerawlins@watdaisy.UUCP (Gregory J.E. Rawlins)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 19

[i can't credit this since i lost the original address...]
>I remember seeing published somwhere (Reader's Digest? Games?)
>a canonical list of ways to measure the height of a building using
>a barometer (throw if off the roof and measure the time to hit the
>ground, etc.).
    I finally tracked down the original mention of this article
to "The Nature of Human Intelligence" by J.P. Guilford McGraw-Hill 1967.
From the discussion it appears is if Guildford made up the list
as a hypothetical case of Creative Student meets Stodgy Orthodoxy.
I could be wrong about this as i found the reference in another book 
("The Universe Within" M.Hunt Simon & Schuster 1982) and he gives direct quotes.
    Maybe over time (1967 remember) it has been added to and
become folklore...maybe sometime in the Neolithic Oog The Magnificent
had just invented the barometer and Ugh The Wiseass came up with a
bunch of reasons why Oog shouldn't have bothered.....
	:-) :-) :-) greg 
-- 
Gregory J.E. Rawlins, Department of Computer Science, U. Waterloo
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