On Sun, Jan 18, 2004 at 12:54:39PM -0500, Bob Lafleur wrote:
> > Anyone know if this story is true?
>
> Sounds like a bunch of crap to me.
>
> For one, did they use the metric system back in the 50's? Especially in a US
> company...
They obviously didn't. Looks like you missed the amount of daily phone
cord snippage: 2.5 cm which nicely translates to one inch (ok, so the
correct conversion factor would be 1 inch = 2.54 but 2.5 is correct
enough in this example). Also, using this approximate of 2.5 cm to the
inch, the 140 cm long phone cords turn out to be exactly 56 inch long.
So it looks to me like the original story (not judging wether it was
true or not) used inches and just the current telling of it was
metrified.
The measurements used in the story therefore look credible from the
units point of view. Of course, the whole story itself can still be a
lot of invented bollocks.
Regards,
Alex.
--
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison
Received on Sun Jan 18 2004 - 13:21:15 GMT