Re: Changing Cycles 'till it Hertz

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Ed Phillips by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <evp-at-pacbell-dot-net>

Tesla list wrote:
> 
> Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>"
<Parpp807-at-aol-dot-com>
> 
> The last two are mispellings, as other things that frequently appear on
> >  this list (see "variations" of toroid and gauge).
> >
> 
> Hi Antonio,
> I'll just bet that you were testing us.
> 
> Some of the older IEEE members may have a clearer explanation
> of what happened at the 1960 Systems International (SI) conference to saddle
> us with the Hertz to replace the meaningful and self-descriptive
> cyc and cps. The way I heard it, the American delegation (IEEE and other
> suspects)
> wanted to keep cyc and cps as the unit of frequency. The euros wanted to make
> a
> distinction between sinusoidal frequency and other cyclic waveforms. They
> wanted
> two new units. And the Germans wanted to honor one of their own. The Great
> Compromise :-)) was to be the new unit of the Hertz which they defined as
> equal
>  to one cycle per second. No reference is made to the type of wave form, the
> Germans got their representation, and we narrowly missed having to learn
> another
> new unit.
> 
> Shears,
> Ralph Zekelman

	I guess I qualify as "an older IEEE member", so a few comments. First,
the IEEE was formed about 1963 by joining the AIEE (American Institude
of Electrical Engineers), a very professional organization formed around
1890, and the IRE (Institute of Radio Engineers) which was founded about
1914 and always seemed to me to be somewhat more of a highly-technical
organization.  I joined both during my college days (make that about
1944-45) as a student member, and have belonged ever since.  At the time
the two organizations were joined we members got a chance to vote on the
merger and I was one of the many who voted against the merger.  (Stay
with me, this is relevant to the topic under discussion.)  Anyhow, after
the merger the spirit of the IEEE tended to drift away from deeply
technical subjects and more toward social activisim and other
interesting but not appropriate subjects.  This is reported to have been
due to influence from the educational sector, but I don't know that
personally.  Anyhow, one of the first things which came along was the
"adoption" of both the metric system and the SI units which are alleged
to be "more scientific".  As an example, with both of these changes came
the european method of writing numbers. Apparently names of units in SI
must come from those of famous technical people, like Tesla for
example.  Problem here is that the term "cps" was also derived from the
name of Charles Proteus Steinmetz, a giant in the electrical engineering
world.  No matter, Hertz it is and Hertz it will be and don't thing
anyone will have problems because of it.

	As part of the process the "proper" usage is now to write numbers is to
have all between 1 and 1000, with the name changing with every factor of
1000 (nano, micro, milli, etc.) when giving values.  Awkward to many of
us, but it looked good to the academic world and kids just out of
college.  The SI theology "denigrates" use of any other system, or use
of any of the old names (mhos instead of the sacred Siemens, etc.)., and
there used to be lots of letters from snot-nosed kids pointing out any
deviant usage.  Along with all of this came the use of hertz for
frequency (as far as I can tell, frequency of anything from fluctuation
of the earth's temperature to frequency of mechanical vibrations etc.). 
The term was adopted in europe some time prior to this, but don't know
when.  In the old day we talked of radar pulse repition frequency as
pps, or pulses per second.  Now the expression Hz is used to refer to
the same thing and doesn't seem to have anything to do with the
waveform.  I have an IEEE dictionary at work which might give the
"correct" definition, but it's a loathsome thing I seldom consult.

	Another foolish thing which still permeates the journals, is the use of an
expression like
5.08 cm by 10.16 cm to express what the original author had written as
"2 x 4", referring to a piece of lumber which hasn't really measured 2"
x 4" for a very long time.  Frequent use of metric conversions with all
significant figures retained where the original expression had no such
precision.

	Bottom line is that, as Faraday said, "names are one thing and science
is another".  I doubt that any competent engineer anywhere in the world
was ever confused by the expression of units in either the english or
metric systems.  The changes were silly and didn't help the engineering
profession at all!  There are alleged to have been some colossal butches
made by confusing metric and english units, as for example in the loss
of one of the Mars probes, but I don't believe that.  Careless
arithmetic, perhaps.........

	Seems to me that Antionio and I have exchanged notes on this subject
before, but not sure.  He will probably have a different point of view
which I hope he'll express from his viewpoint in another country and
another hemisphere.

	Please excuse this rant.  I had a bad day with the editors last Friday.

Ed