Chinese Civil War - High-Level Rules Overview

[Guinness]

Although it should be properly ya'll, according to the Texan/Southern accent.

It's spelled that way in Canada. They also spell other words strangely, like "colour". It's a weird country.

[Walter]

They also spell other words strangely, like "colour".

That's because it's proper English, not the commercial (read: "keep it as cheap as possible for newspaper ads where every additional letter costs way too much money") English of the States. :D

[Sachmle]

That's because it's proper English, not the commercial (read: "keep it as cheap as possible for newspaper ads where every additional letter costs way too much money") English of the States. :D

But we don't speak English, we speak American. ;)

[Valles]

As I understand it? The most old-fashioned and linguistically conservative dialect of English in common use...

...is the American one.

Consider 'as it were'; in the Commonwealth, this phrase is a stock oddity, but in the United States, it's an example of a working grammatical rule which has been abandoned elsewhere.

[ctwaterman]

There are some very wierd and Odd things about both America and our English Cousins....   some changes we adopt in the blink of an Eye texting, Iphones and anything that goes bang wosh or is usable as a weapon....

Our Language and well our unit of measurement seems to be where we draw the line.  New words to describe things sure but how we do grammer or dont in many cases is resistant to change.

As an example the Metric system has been legaly adopted by the United States for over 120+ years I believe by an act of congress even.   But we still manage to crash satalites into Mars because the delivery team used standard english units of measuremeants like Miles Per Hour and the De-Orbit team was using Kilometers per hour and simply assumed the speed of the Satalite delivery payload to Mars was moving in Kph instead of Mph so the satelite slamed into the atmosphere doing nearly twice the speed the programers had thought and then slamed into the planet.  Oooooppps.... but dont worry were a young country we will grow out of It... ;)

[TexanCowboy]

They also spell other words strangely, like "colour".

That's because it's proper English, not the commercial (read: "keep it as cheap as possible for newspaper ads where every additional letter costs way too much money") English of the States. :D

So, in other words, a Dutch newspaper should look like this?

. .... .... .. ... . .. . . ... ..

Periods to minimize ink. *runs away*  ;D

[damocles]

History Lesson.

The United States by 1776 (the Colonies) onward was a major industrial zone (Number five or four manufacturer in the planetary economy after China Britain and France, I forget which). This is not taught in popular history.

The basis of that manufacturing base was iron, copper, and timber working industries that was used to build in North America more than one third of the British merchant fleet.  

The Colonies had less than 3 million people, most of them were unskilled. That meant that the Americans either had to import or invent machine tools to precision make such things as pulleys, gears, and mechanical linkages that you find in such complex artifacts as sailing ships.

The American machine tools were based on English practice that they learned or stole or duplicated. They used an English  machine tool economy BEFORE other nations did. When other nations did follow Britain into the machine tool Industrial Revolution, they went French metric, since that was the European measurement system courtesy of Napoleon.

That was how the Americans were able to build complete frigates with local produced tech from 1794 onward, including everything down to the 24 pounder long guns and 32 pounder carronades.

Those ships didn't just magically appear. There was a machine tool tech base behind it.

The Americans stuck with the English base 2 system. They discovered to their surprise that this at least in the 19th Century produced far tighter tolerances and part fits.    

So combined with a worker population, that was basically unskilled, the Americans used machine tool designed "intelligence" to manufacture. This tended to produce a bias to use design in the machine tool to obtain the precision fit that European manufacturers relied on skilled artisans to achieve. As an example, Pratt and Whitney's Wasp engines were made using engineers who designed tolerances into machine tools that they had made, whereas Bristol and more often Napier used the skills of their craftsmen to form finish precision parts. This was an RAF headache in that they could not cannibalize engines to rebuild damaged engines at the air base level. The Americans could rebuild a R-1830 on a jungle airstrip. Even RR could not mix and swap parts from one Merlin to another with the ease of a Packard copy or an Allison, even though the Merlin was a superior design to the Allison.         

You see where this ACTUALLY leads with the German 88mm tank gun breechblock having 200+ parts while the American 90 mm equivalent  had something like 96 or so and was a tighter gas seal on top of it? Simplification was one consequence.

What has that got to do with the Mars Orbiter? American scientists who planned the mission (academics who were NOT engineers) used SI measurements to plan the trajectories and mission maneuver commands. American engineers who BUILT the Mars orbiter used what they knew, which was the manufacturing tradition of the United States based on English practice.

Note that when the Americans reverse engineered the artifacts of nations that used the British tradition, (Italian torpedoes and British aviation engines), their copies or duplicates were as good or (Packard Merlin and Oerlikon as well as the Bofors) or better than the original. It was when they tried to adapt their machine tool driven manufacturing approach to SI measurement derived manufactured artifacts (generally German or French like the MG 42 or the HS 404) that the Americans botched the attempts. That was because measurement tech base matters.          

[Valles]

Without contesting any of your facts - much of them I didn't know, but find plausible - I must strongly question the assertion that finer machining tolerances are directly linked to the Imperial measurement system. Correlation is not causation, and so far, you've only demonstrated the former.

[damocles]

Think about it. With the crude methods of the day, screw set measurement gauges meant that halfs were easier to set and maintain than thirds, whereas fifths were almost impossible.

SI is base 10, so until you figured out the gauge sets (Post WW I in Europe) you really could not divide intervals by odd segment increments. The Americans got their segment intervals by rule of halfs. 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64, 1/128, etc.  When they also figured out thirds, well that was why you see things like machine guns, revolvers, and lever action rifles invented by Americans first. They could make them in the machine.  

In other words they got a huge jump on Europe, not only in machine tool tech, but also in measurement tolerances that made those precision fit things possible. The thing is that their tools held gauge set, and didn't slip, jiggle, or misalign. (Yes it means that you get a Ford flat 8 or Packard V-12 with much finer tolerances than a RR product until the British import American machine tools.  :-X). . Its the one case when base ten actually does NOT work to your advantage in measurement.

This changes when the engineers at Mercedes and Daimler Benz get their German developed base 10 gauge sets (around 1933). Then they started making engines and artifacts , that we just now are able to duplicate (1/15,000th of an inch is their 1942 normal!) Note that Hispano Suiza did not get such gauge sets, so the HS 12Y series engines did not work that well, ditto for the other machine-tooled French products.  :'(

[P3D]

What has that got to do with the Mars Orbiter? American scientists who planned the mission (academics who were NOT engineers) used SI measurements to plan the trajectories and mission maneuver commands. American engineers who BUILT the Mars orbiter used what they knew, which was the manufacturing tradition of the United States based on English practice.

Now the irony is that SI (or its predecessor, the MKSA) is an 'engineering' system of units, with units more 'useful' magnitude of base units. Part of the scientists community is still using CGS system (well, one of the several) to some extent, as it have some perceived advantages in formulations of electricity/magnetism and quantum theory, and a lot of data is traditionally tabulated in CGS.
But then don't forget the physicists' favorite unit, the eV. It is not CGS, and 'metric' only to the extent that one could put SI prefixes to it so it would sound even more cooler, e.g. megelectronvolt 8).

[Nobody]

While I fail to see what any of this has anything to do with the topic, or why 1/128" should be any better than ~0.2 mm, may I ask what "CGS" means?

[P3D]

While I fail to see what any of this has anything to do with the topic, or why 1/128" should be any better than ~0.2 mm, may I ask what "CGS" means?

centimeter-gram-second

[damocles]

Take a piece of paper and fold it into half, half again, half again.

Take the same piece of paper and fold it into half, then into fifths, then into half, then into fifths, etc.

Simple.

You have to establish a physical duplicable gauge, that can be bench milled to need anywhere at any time.

If you have a standard inch, pound, pint(of water at sea-level), second you can set any English length, weight, or time by rule of halfs.

Not quite as easy, even today, with the metric system.

Please note also that time is still NOT base ten below the day, month, year scale?

D.        

[maddox]

I'm a metalworker, and I see advantages in both systems. And yes, I can work in both quite handely,albeit the imperial system takes a tad more time if I have to recalculate the values between metric and Imperial [size=8t](that's math on paper, messuring with calipers and verniers is another matter)[/size].
I'm one of the few people at work who can make a good estimate of what kind of tread we're talking about (unless going over 1" UNF).

But for daily situations, I prefer the DIN based agreements, except pneumatic and hydraulic couplings, there I swear by BSP treads.

[Desertfox]

Aerospace Engineering is very interesting when it comes to measurements. Aeronautical (airplanes etc) Engineers use mainly English units while Astronautical (spacecraft) Engineers use Metric. So I have to learn to use both and have used them interchangeably. Physics classes where all SI while Engineering classes depended on the professor's preference.

The Mars Lander accident was caused by one side using meters, the other using yards, not much difference but it adds up over space travel...