Re: More on number bases

At 9:54 pm -0400 18/5/02, John Cowan wrote:
>Raymond Brown scripsit:
>
>> (1/12 of a pound troy* - still used by
>> gold- and silversmiths when I was young, but now legally obsolete in the
>> UK).
>
>Since 1879, so I doubt you remember its abolition!  Nonetheless, it could
>doubtless still be used internally to the trade,
It was always quoted as tho it were used - so being an innocent little
schoolkid, I assumed it was.  Maybe books gave that impression, so that
problems could still be set using pounds troy as well as pounds avoirdupois
:)

In those far off days, we started the day with "mental arithmetic" where we
listened to the problem and were allowed to write nothing down except the
answer.  Part of the fun was manipulating all the different number bases
used in the quaint weights, measures & monetary units of the time - and, of
course, electronic calculators were the stuff of science fiction.

Now in these largely metric times (in the UK), my students grab their
calculators for even the simplest calculations, and regard me almost like
an exterrestrial alien when I suggest they might be able to do the
calculation "in their heads".  I guess a surfeit of junk food has clogged
the grey cells  {sigh}

Ray.


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Speech is _poiesis_ and human linguistic articulation
is centrally creative.
                                 GEORGE STEINER.
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