I think we've got a nice balance here in the UK. I'm all for pints in pubs and miles, but use celsius (farenheit is a bloody silly scale) and centimetres. America is imperial or nothing and most of the EU is totally metric. The error with the probe is inexcusable cockup. Concorde had a similar problem being an Anglo/French effort when it was designed way back in the '60s. You would have thought NASA would've learned something from that. I believe the Channel Tunnel was a wholly metric venture though;-)
They may have originated in England, but your pints and gallons are different to ours ! This illustrates the difference between metric and imperial. Metric is based on measurable occurances in nature whilst imperial is based on strange historical quirks and what seemed to be a good idea to someone at the time.
Actually, you can see a Colossus in action at Bletchley Park, England. They built one working entirely from photo records and the knowledge of the surviving original team members. Pretty impressive stuff.
Well, not just that. It's simply because nobody has heard of Colossus. It's still officially classified under the British Official Secrets act. It only came to public light after a person who worked on it during WWII wrote a book about it 40 years on. The British government still tried to quash the book even then.
Slashdot Mirror
Should be called A History of Modern US Computing
I think we've got a nice balance here in the UK. ;-)
I'm all for pints in pubs and miles, but use celsius (farenheit is a bloody silly scale) and centimetres.
America is imperial or nothing and most of the EU is totally metric.
The error with the probe is inexcusable cockup. Concorde had a similar problem being an Anglo/French effort when it was designed way back in the '60s. You would have thought NASA would've learned something from that.
I believe the Channel Tunnel was a wholly metric venture though
That's BARTENDER over here my American cousin ;-)
They may have originated in England, but your pints and gallons are different to ours ! This illustrates the difference between metric and imperial. Metric is based on measurable occurances in nature whilst imperial is based on strange historical quirks and what seemed to be a good idea to someone at the time.
Actually, you can see a Colossus in action at Bletchley Park, England. They built one working entirely from photo records and the knowledge of the surviving original team members. Pretty impressive stuff.
Yup, plus it's rocket engine was built on German technology.
ENIAC was just a calculator too - it produced ballistic tables.
Not forgetting the steam locomotive, RADAR and the Jet engine ;-)
Well, not just that. It's simply because nobody has heard of Colossus. It's still officially classified under the British Official Secrets act. It only came to public light after a person who worked on it during WWII wrote a book about it 40 years on. The British government still tried to quash the book even then.
Haven't Sparc chips had this for years ?