How do I read this measurement? It’s from an old drawing, but I think it’s hard to read it. I’m not used to feet and inches. 
I also wonder how we can post pictures at this new forum? I can’t just copy the img tag from photobucket as I did at the old forum, it will not work. As a test I post the img tag here directly from photobucket: Can you see the image? I can’t! It seems that the forum changed my tag, the tag I see now is not like the tag I pasted directly from photobucket. That’s the reason it does not work. What’s going on here?
You have to type [ img ] photo [/img ] in yourself (without the spaces). PITA.
That’s exactly what I do.
I managed to copy and paste the “link” portion of the tag to view the pic, which looks like possibly old (and often still used) surveyor feet and tenth’s of a foot measurements. Modern surveyors sometimes use feet and hundredth’s of a foot.
Brad
Electro, I copied and pasted the URL to the picture between the two img tags as modelmaker51 indicated.
Regards,
twcenterprises: So this is maybe 7 feet and 6 tenth of a feet? The drawing is the D&RGW hanging bridge. I think that it was completed 1879. Can someone help a Swede that is used to centimeter to tell how many centimeter that is? According to my calculations. 7 feet = 213,36 cm 6 tenth of a feet = 18,288 cm 213,36 cm + 18,288 cm = 231,648 cm Is that correct?
Tom Bryant_MR: If that was the only thing you did it must be that the new forum don’t like Mac’s. I had no problem with this at the old forum.
To return to the original question before all the image posting hoo haa, I read it seven point six feet. Seven and six tenths feet. A lot of Civil engineering uses tenths of feet, as on a level rod used in surveying, et al, so it is not unreasonable that was the intent. And yes, 7.6 feet equals 231.648 cm. The decimal point is that little spot on the key, one to the right of the comma which you are using.
Virginian: I really like your answer, thanks.
Hi Electrolove, the conversion from feet to CM is 30.48. So if you have a measurement of 7.6 feet, this would be 231.648cm
Electrolove, one more thing that you should be aware of, unless you already do, here in America we use the period “.” where Europe uses a “,” . If I were reading 231,648, I would have called that two hundred thirty one thousand, six hundred forty eight. By placing the period in the number, it seperates whole numbers from fractions of a number. For instance, 231.648 centimeters means…two hundred thirty one centimeters and 648 thousants of a centimeter.
I was thinking about the reason you use “.” because I use “,” as you said. Thanks for sorting that out. Very helpful.
If that figure is, in reality, 7.6 feet then 231.648 cm is what my hot-smokin’ Texas Instruments Business Analyst Two Plus returns when I crank in the conversion figures.
And that ain’t no BS there electrolove!!!
Ahhh Come ON RT!!! Idid that in my head, but I didn’t have calculators back in 1939…LOL Just kiddin big guy !!
grayfox1119;
Saying “My Texas Instrument Business Analyst Two Plus” is a heck of a lot better than using the word “Slide Rule” even if I could remember how to use mine which would be dependent on remembering just exactly where to find mine!!! It’s really h*ll to get old!!!
RT Poteet: Tell me about it!!! ( Getting old that is) As for slide rule, I found my old one from college days in the bottom drawer of my dresser under a bunch of “history”. When I showed it to my grandkids, they were all amased, especially when I had them give me a big number to multiply, and I got the answer faster than their calculator. Now they think it is “cool” and they all want one!!! Hey RT, do you think we can go into business and make some money on this “novelty” from the past??? LOL
We’re a day late and a dollar short there grayfox; when I was studying computer programming in the mid-'80s somebody showed up in class with one; they had found it at a Nieman-Marcus, Nordstroms, one of those upscale department stores. It was being manufactured by a company in San Antonio, Texas, and was made out of brass and was absolutely immaculate - beautifully engraved and supplied in a felt lined Alligator skin carrying case - and perfectly accurate - we ran several mathematical calculations through the computer to check its accuracy. It also was running $150.00. I’m going to guess the company is still doing business; wasn’t too many years ago that I saw a Charles Kuralt blurb on his “On the Road” series about it. And the price was no longer $150.00. It was being sold less as a functional item - although it was that - and more as a nostalgia item ; a conversation piece for a desktop or the like.
Mine’s around somewhere; I suppose I’ll open a junkbox one of these days and there it’ll be. Did I see you mention your age being 67? I’m 66.
P.S. I have a granddaughter who is a graduate student at Champaign-Urbana studying chemistry. Her undergraduate work was as a mathematics major at University of Alabama-Birmingham; she found one at a swap meet or someplace like that, learned how to use it, and does. She also was amazed at the speed with which you can do calculations.
Warning: Way off topic
Getting old truly gets harder every day.
I was a substitute for some high school chemistry and physics classes in 1998. The teacher had a giant slide rule (about 6 ft long) hanging from the ceiling. The students had no idea what it was or how to use it. Spent an enjoyable 50 minutes teaching its use and principles. As I was trying to demonstrate a slide rule’s use in the homework problems, it struck me that the drawback to the slide rule (all the students had graphing calculators) in the kids’ eyes was that you had to know how to think to use one. Although the slide rule could run calculations quickly, it didn’t tell you where to put the decimal point!
Same thing happened when I was trying to teach graphical analysis as a way to solve physics problems without knowing calculus in 2000-2001. The students had no concept of the relationships between algebraic equations and graphs because they had rarely if ever drawn graphs by hand. They’d always punched it in to their graphing calculator without a thought as to how it worked. Identifying local slopes of curves by inspection or quickly estimating areas under curves were arcane, useless skills in their eyes until they saw me quickly solving problems on the board without an advanced scientific graphing calculator. Then when I pointed out that early calculators used those very same alogrithims (logs, Simpson’s rule, etc) to perform the math, their jaws dropped.
Still have my circular slide rule - that was my favorite - and my CRC tables. Have forgotten most of my memorized log and trig tables, though.
yours in early geekdom (and presently 52)
Fred W
Off topic sort of: Could the measurement be 7’ 6’’ I would check some of the surrounding numbers to confirm some of the ideas from above. OK All you Engineer guys: did you ever see or use a hand calculator called a CURTA 1 ? ? It 's the strangest hand held mechanical stepped calculator ever seen, go on the internet and find one.
TO CALCULATE METRIC FROM IMPERIAL IN THREE STEPS
1 Read the measure and take the number of feet and multiply by 12
example a 8’ 6" means 8 feet 6 inches - take the 8 feet multiplied by 12 becomes 96 inches. ,
example b 25’ 10" means 25 feet 10 inches - take the 25 feet multiplied by 12 becomes 300 inches
- Add the number of inches to the number of inches in the feet
example (a) 8’ 6" -take the 8 feet multiplied by 12 becomes 96 inches add 6 inches = 102 inches. ,
example (b) 25’ 10" - take the 25 feet multiplied by 12 becomes 300 inches add 10 inches = 310 inches
3 Multiply the total number of inches by 25.4 to give you millimetres or 2.54 to give you Centimetres
example (a) 8’ 6" = 102 inches. multiplied by 25.4 = 2590.8mm or 259.08cm or 2.509m,
example (b) 25’ 10" - = 310 inches multiplied by 25.4 = 7874mm or 787.4cm or 7.874m,
As you can see, all you need to do is move the decimal point. The hardest thing is to convert in your thinking. I just think the US should have converted when it was going to… it is much easier!
regards from Australia
Trevor website www.xdford.digitalzones.com FYI