A man who ran out of air at the bottom of the ocean

Re:A man who ran out of air at the bottom of the ocean by OJFord on Monday June 03, 2019 @03:58AM (#20081249)

150lb? That always strikes me as distinctly American, as opposed to 10st 10lb.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:A man who ran out of air at the bottom of the ocean by saalweachter on Monday June 03, 2019 @08:47AM (#20082532)

I'm so glad America got away before y'all went stone-crazy.

Redefining the hundredweight, seriously?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:A man who ran out of air at the bottom of the ocean by OJFord on Monday June 03, 2019 @05:32PM (#20089055)

Hey, for a '1,000 pennyer' I'll advocate for your pound-as-largest-unit madness.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:A man who ran out of air at the bottom of the ocean by saalweachter on Monday June 03, 2019 @06:09PM (#20089442)

You had options! The London stone for wool was 12.5 lbs, which would give you the same 8 stone to the hundredweight without redefining a hundredweight as 112 lbs.

Or if you wanted to go the other way -- there were plenty of other definitions of the stone in use at the time, after all -- you could have gone with 16 pounds, to maintain parity with the dram and the ounce. Y'all still likely would have screwed up the hundredweight, as 128lb, but you might have at least fixed things by making the ton 16 hundredweight/2048 lb, which would at least have been some lovely binary fractions.

But 14 pounds? That's just madness.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:A man who ran out of air at the bottom of the ocean by ChrisRR on Monday June 03, 2019 @11:30AM (#20084219)

Oops yes, I would actually have said 10 stone 10. I just copied the comment text because I was focusing on the 2 meters

[ Parent | on HN ]