Dear All,

>>> Hertz is a meaningless label in fact its someones Name and is technically
>>> inapproapriat when describing Frequency.
>> 

I think the real reason for changing from cycles/second is that the units 
describe the dimensions of the quantity. Dimensions in physics are relatively 
few things: mass, length, time etc. Cycles are not a dimension, so a tidying up 
of the old name would rename it "per second" or "1/seconds", which most would 
find confusing.

As for the name hertz (named after Heinrich Hertz who didn't discover frequency 
...), I suspect much of this was down to bargaining inside whatever committee 
defined SI. They managed to largely reconcile the warring tribes of CGS and 
MKS, so I think we have to accept some unfortunate decisions. The old CGS+MKS 
systems certainly were a major mess, e.g. 1000 calories = 1 Calorie.


> Whatever happened to LITRES and JARS?

If you want to keep This Sceptred Isle as the last bastion of eccentric units, 
note that you could validly descibe voltage gain in fathoms per metre. I have a 
friend who wrote a booklet giving the speed of light in such useful units as 
furlongs per fortnight*.

73,
Chris G4OKW


* 1.803 x 10^12. But then I expect you knew that.

-----------------------
Dr Chris Trayner
School of Electronic & Electrical Engineering,
The University of Leeds,
Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 113 34 32053
Fax: +44 113 34 32032