Bitcoin Mining Now Consuming More Electricity Than Many Countries

Re:Bitcoin Mining Now Consuming More Electricity Than Many C... by Someone on Thursday November 23, 2017 @03:06AM (#15763607)

Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Conference_on_Weights_..., the Watt and the Joule were formalized at the sa,e conference (in 1948).

Of course, that doesn’t rule out that your claim is true, but it does make me wonder whether it does.

I would guess kWh is used because it makes it easier for customers to verify that they aren’t scammed, given that appliances are tagged with Watts. I guess appliances are tagged with Watts and not Joule/s because it is easier to use a single unit than two.

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Re:Bitcoin Mining Now Consuming More Electricity Than Many C... by BurningFrog on Thursday November 23, 2017 @01:40PM (#15767001)

Yes, but note my "wide acceptance of" weasel phrase. My impression is that the Joule only started being used widely in the 70s.

I did try to find out when it was defined but failed, so thanks for digging that fact up!

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Re:Bitcoin Mining Now Consuming More Electricity Than Many C... by Someone on Thursday November 23, 2017 @06:05PM (#15768410)

There’s also https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Watt%2CJoule&y....

That is for books and must cover mentions of both Watt’s and Joule’s name and of the unit (and, likely, way more of the names. The units typically are abbreviated), so I don’t think that proves or disproves much about wide use of the units.

The difference before 1860 probably is there because James Prescott Joule was less than a year old when James Watt died in 1819 (at the age of 83)

Edit: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=kJ%2CkWh%2Ccal... seems to support the claim that “Joule” came up relatively late.

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