[Elecraft] ESSB

[Walter Underwood]

Lower case for kilo and hecto might have been chosen to avoid collisions with fundamental and derived units: K is Kelvin, H is Henries. Of course, micro collides with m (meters), but Mega was already taken.

Just a guess.

I’m hoping we never have to deal with a TT (teraTesla). Well, that might happen in a star.

wunder
K6WRU
CM87wj
http://observer.wunderwood.org/

On Nov 18, 2014, at 4:24 PM, Fred Jensen <k6dgw at foothill.net> wrote:

> So, why is that?  Most of the abbreviations for metric [i.e. SI] prefixes with positive exponents are upper-case ... M [mega], G [giga], T [tera], P [peta], X [exa], Z [zetta], Y [yotta].  *All* of the abbreviations for prefixes denoting negative exponents are lower-case ... d [deci], c [centi], m [milli], u [micro, don't know how to get a mu in email], n [nano], p [pico], f [femto], a [atto], z [zepto], y [yocto].  When I bleed into the plasma machine each Fri, the blood center measures my total serum protein in <somethings> per deciliter
> 
> Only da [deca 10^1], h [hecto 10^2], and k [kilo 10^3] violate this pattern, which seems very un-metric.  One would think the prefix abbreviations would be paired letters, positive exponents get upper-case and negative exponents get lower-case.  How hard is that?
> 
> The prefixes themselves have some basis in real languages for smaller [in absolute value] exponents ... I've always figured "milli" came from a French word but since I speak almost no French, I'm not sure.  I struggled through 4 years of Latin in high school and I think I know the origins of centi, deca, deci, and several others.  Larger exponents in absolute value really appear made up -- I mean, "yocto" and "Yotta"?
> 
> So, I generally camp on 1406100 daHz looking for folks activating summits.  Please call me if you're on a pointy part of the Earth.
> 
> 73,
> 
> Fred K6DGW
> - Northern California Contest Club
> - CU in the 50th Running of the Cal QSO Party 3-4 Oct 2015
> - www.cqp.org
> 
> On 11/18/2014 3:19 PM, Peter Eijlander (PA0PJE) wrote:
>> It wasn't about Mr. Hertz it was about the kilo that consistently is
>> written by a lot of folks with an upper case K, what I tried to focus
>> on. I suppose everyone knows why Hertz was given to the cycles per
>> second Phil was referring to...:-)
> 
> ______________________________________________________________
> Elecraft mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:Elecraft at mailman.qth.net
> 
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
> Message delivered to wunder at wunderwood.org