All,

there are 3 1/2 countries left in the world still using the inch system ... the half one is obvious, it is GB, (they are fervently trying every other day and succeeding better and better) then there is Birma, and Burundi still using it, but, (help me, folks) cannot remember which the 3rd country was ..... which was it, can you help me?

(sorry, could not resist )

Was quite amusing to me observing Americans sounding off about their own measuring standards, and, yes, to me too it appears as hmmh...a bit unbalanced (nice euphemism, Bernhard!). I've got no serious with problems with US feet and inches. But there are other things ... Why the heck did they let vinyl records start from the outer groove? Gear pitch is count of teeth per inch, about same is tap pitch. Completely weird to me . How do they intend to measure pitch then, a sliding caliper having no counter and hence being useless. And why do they measure wire thickness by the weight of a miles-long snippet of wire, which, put on a spool is too heavy for 2 men to lift? And the sliding caliper still being useless, having no built-in heavy weight gauge? Or was it that they measure the mileage of a given weight of wire, the sliding caliper then having no length counter???

US folks, relax, we Germans too have utterly stupid technical standards, if i think of it, every 2nd or 3rd DIN standard is Selbstzweck (probably best translated as: end in itself, a purpose being its own purpose, its own justification)

pantyfanatic,
this 10^9 notion is quite usual on technical forums as well as other strings describing mathematical functions like sqrt(x) or exp(x) . What amazes me are those folks drawing electronic circuits using ASCII characters only (only readable wih a constant width font )

__________________
Greets,
Bernhard