KM vs Miles

[Andy in Germany]

Fun fact. The original guillotine was built using traditional French measurements, and was 13 pied’ (feet) tall. So no Revolution (or metric system) without proper engineering in feet & inches ;-)

That does make sense, as the metric system was developed during the revolution, to bring a rational system to replace the irrational mess of localised systems in France. It has to be said the French were not keen either, so Napoleon brought about a compromise of using old words based on the new measurements, so people would accept it...

 

[Molteni Man]

I did not know that! Shame NASA didn't learn from them ... https://www.simscale.com/blog/nasa-mars-climate-orbiter-metric/

And I didn’t know that fact! What a mistake!

 

[Dogtrousers]

The Gimli Glider incident was due to a mess up over units. They refuelled the plane using a calculation based on a density of kg per litre, but used pounds per litre. Or something like that. Anyway the upshot was that they didn't put enough juice in and the plane ran out of fuel mid-air.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

 

[classic33]

Fun fact. The original guillotine was built using traditional French measurements, and was 13 pied’ (feet) tall. So no Revolution (or metric system) without proper engineering in feet & inches ;-)

It's a copy of an earlier version which was in use near me at the time.

They'd to flee for their lives, or face the system at the time.
The refined it, using a sharper, angled blade in a light frame. They'd a working engineering model made, which "wasn't allowed".
Fleeing for their lives didn't save them.