Entirely arbitrary
I have been alive 1.199 billion seconds (and counting.) I recently completed my 38th orbit of the sun, and experienced my 469th full moon.
In the time since my birth our planet has racked up 35.7 billion kilometers on the odometer just circling the sun, while the sun has travelled 263.8 billion kilometers on an arc around galactic centre. I haven't been out there with a tape measure to confirm these figures you understand - it's cold out there, and there's no kind of atmosphere.
I grew up a bit confused as to exactly how many noughts a billion had. The British billion used to be a thousand times bigger than the American billion. In 1974 the UK officially downsized and our billion shrunk to the US value of a mere 1,000,000,000.
It's the story of my generation - decimalisation, metrification, globalisation and depreciation. Imperial parents versus metric kids. We learnt metric in school, and got confused at home.
I never did get my head around the old pounds, shillings and pence. Shillings were a term that mystified my generation. Sometimes I'd be told that a shilling was 12 pence, and other times I'd be told that a shilling was 5 pence. What I never grasped was that both statements were correct. A shilling was 12 old pennies, and there were 20 shillings in a pound. However under decimalisation there were only 100 new pence to the pound, rather than 240 old pennies. A shilling was 12 old pence, 12 old pence equalled 5 new pennies, therefore a shilling was 5 new pence.
We'd learn about centimeters, meters and kilometers in school, yet in the real world we were confronted with inches, feet and yards. In cookery lessons we'd measure out our ingredients in liters and grams, and then be bamboozled by recipes at home calling for pints and ounces.
You have to wonder just what drugs our forebears were on when they came up with the various measures:
weight
16 ounces to a pound
14 pounds to a stone
160 stone to a ton
length
12 inches to a foot
3 foot to a yard
1760 yards to a mile
volume
20 fluid ounces to a pint
8 pints to a gallon
currency
12 pennies to a shilling
20 shillings to a pound
time
60 seconds to a minute
60 minutes to an hour
24 hours to a day
7 days to a week
Considering they had nothing to help them with calculations other than the abacus and memorised times tables, you'd think they'd have settled on something simpler. If they had picked a consistent base to use for each unit of measurement that would have been an improvement. Imagine if there were 12 pennies in a shilling, and 12 shillings in a pound. What if there were 12 inches to a foot, 12 feet in a yard, and 12 yards in a mile? Of course there’d be 12 ounces in a pound, and 12 pounds in a stone. Instead the Imperial system is entirely arbitrary and amazingly still widely used.
So I suppose what I'm trying to say is that a lot of time has passed since I was born, I've gone around in circles, and put a lot of miles on the clock, but when I was a nipper a billion really meant something, and whatever units you use to measure progress - some things never change.
In the time since my birth our planet has racked up 35.7 billion kilometers on the odometer just circling the sun, while the sun has travelled 263.8 billion kilometers on an arc around galactic centre. I haven't been out there with a tape measure to confirm these figures you understand - it's cold out there, and there's no kind of atmosphere.
I grew up a bit confused as to exactly how many noughts a billion had. The British billion used to be a thousand times bigger than the American billion. In 1974 the UK officially downsized and our billion shrunk to the US value of a mere 1,000,000,000.
It's the story of my generation - decimalisation, metrification, globalisation and depreciation. Imperial parents versus metric kids. We learnt metric in school, and got confused at home.
I never did get my head around the old pounds, shillings and pence. Shillings were a term that mystified my generation. Sometimes I'd be told that a shilling was 12 pence, and other times I'd be told that a shilling was 5 pence. What I never grasped was that both statements were correct. A shilling was 12 old pennies, and there were 20 shillings in a pound. However under decimalisation there were only 100 new pence to the pound, rather than 240 old pennies. A shilling was 12 old pence, 12 old pence equalled 5 new pennies, therefore a shilling was 5 new pence.
We'd learn about centimeters, meters and kilometers in school, yet in the real world we were confronted with inches, feet and yards. In cookery lessons we'd measure out our ingredients in liters and grams, and then be bamboozled by recipes at home calling for pints and ounces.
You have to wonder just what drugs our forebears were on when they came up with the various measures:
weight
16 ounces to a pound
14 pounds to a stone
160 stone to a ton
length
12 inches to a foot
3 foot to a yard
1760 yards to a mile
volume
20 fluid ounces to a pint
8 pints to a gallon
currency
12 pennies to a shilling
20 shillings to a pound
time
60 seconds to a minute
60 minutes to an hour
24 hours to a day
7 days to a week
Considering they had nothing to help them with calculations other than the abacus and memorised times tables, you'd think they'd have settled on something simpler. If they had picked a consistent base to use for each unit of measurement that would have been an improvement. Imagine if there were 12 pennies in a shilling, and 12 shillings in a pound. What if there were 12 inches to a foot, 12 feet in a yard, and 12 yards in a mile? Of course there’d be 12 ounces in a pound, and 12 pounds in a stone. Instead the Imperial system is entirely arbitrary and amazingly still widely used.
So I suppose what I'm trying to say is that a lot of time has passed since I was born, I've gone around in circles, and put a lot of miles on the clock, but when I was a nipper a billion really meant something, and whatever units you use to measure progress - some things never change.
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