Where does "Mil" come from 1

[swertel]

As general office discussions go, this one is always one that I couldn't find the history on.

A mil is 0.001 inch. Why is it called a mil? Is it a millionth of some unit? Is it of Latin or Greek origin?

--Scott

 

[Skogsgurra]

Dear kanggadget,

Yes, you are right. CEJ contacted Henry Ford and offered his help. The development of the "standard inch" took about 30 years. Johansson had started to work on a unified inch in 1906 and there were several difficulties; different measuring temperatures and differing measures between Great Britain and the USA, evolving "practical standards". In 1912, Johansson decided to use the 25.4 mm inch at 20 centigrades and it was only in october 1932 that a committee in the Bureau of Standards decided to propose tha Johansson relation between inch and mm. The decision was taken by the ASA in March 1933.

My source is the Swedish book "C.E. Johansson 1864-1943, Master of measures" By Torsten Althin. Printed in Stockholm 1947.

There is a bibliography at the end of the book, which I could scan and mail you if you leav an e-mail address here.

Gunnar Englund

 

[kanggadget]

Dear Gunnar Englund (skogsgurra),

Thank you very much for your reply.
I am afraid that perhaps all references are written in Swedish language. However, I would be very happy to recieve the bibliography of the book from you.
My email address is : cskang@kriss.re.kr
(I am working in a metrology institute in Korea.)

Thank you very much again for your hospitality.

Chu-Shik Kang.

 

[randi]

These are the kind of stories that made India go metric all the way. I guess many other countries and people have not made up their mind yet. It's matter of educating people and come to an agreement in retaining the most useful terminology and dropping the confusing terminology. By widening the scope of SI units and standardization we can make this world an easier place to accomplish our day to day tasks.

For example look at the presuure units that are in psi, psig, psia, "H2O, "Hg, mmHg, cmHg, ft of H2O, Torr, milliTorr, kPa, Pa, bar, millibar, lbf/in2, kips, kgf/cm2, and so on.

Why US is not committed to make progress in this very important area, like they tried to do for the milleneum bug Y2K which proved not to be as big a scare as they had claimed it to be? People worlwide are definitely loseing time and money going through a number of unnecessary calculation on a daily basis, that could be avoided.

 

[zqew05]

I dunno, criticizing the U.S. for its failures is fashionable nowadays but life here is so fun and so much freedom! I left the Asian country I grew up in because I could be thrown in jail if I criticize. Maybe it's the reason I immigrated here and never looked back. So let's all lighten up and discover the joys of knowing inches/feet/ounce/gram/horsepower/etc. Screw metric, it's too impersonal. (toungue-in-cheek)

 

[jims99]

I'll stay out of the political dabate (but I'll just add that I'm in the U.S. and I do favor the metric system).

Responding to torch - sounds like the term "mil" is used differently in the metric world as you pointed out to millimeters. Here in the U.S., if I say "The sheet of paper I'm writing on is 4 mils thick" it means 0.004 inches.

jim s.