[BC] need a NON-technical explanation

[RichardBJohnson at comcast.net]

Kilocycles became kilohertz some time in the early '60s. It was a political decision. One can check Wikipedia for the latest historical revision, but basically we were all satisfied with c.p.s. After that, we even had to change mmfd to pF because someone claimed that Mr. Farad need better visibility. Micro-micro-farad was, and still quite obviously is much more descriptive than picofarads. Now, in the Hz corner, we even have to deal with the possibly of this error: (mHz instead of MHz). A milli-hertz is 1/1000th of a c.p.s., the very slow roll of a large earthquake.

The engineering joke at the time was a Hz to c.p.s. conversion chart with Hz as the ordinate and c.p.s. as the abscissa. It, of course, was a straight line starting at the origin and ending at the limit.

Cheers,
Richard B. Johnson
Book: http://www.AbominableFirebug.com/

----- Original Message -----
From: "Donna Halper" <dlh at donnahalper.com>