You did such a great job of taking what most would consider a dull subject and turning it into a full video. Bravo Robin. This is the most underrated retro channel.
@@axemanracing6222 Well we know about disks, but we didn't know about screen sizes in inches for a long time! As a kid of 1984, we measured CRT TVs always in centimeters! Only since the invention of flat screens and computer monitors in general, we kind of shifted over to inches. So back in the day, it would have been important for any "metric country" to have cm on their TV packaging or advertisement, and have it to the first decimal point, so it looks bigger than that of the other brand.
Thanks, Robin. I love these 'abstract' videos of yours. They are so informative and this one played-out like a "Ripley's Believe it or Not" episode, although not quite as dark lol!
CRT screens were typically measured on the diagonal size of the screen - so that 5-inch measurement is from top left to bottom right, minus the overlap/border. Here in the UK we still use a mixture of Imperial and metric measurements. Typically we do height and distances in Imperial (5 feet 10, 500 miles) and weight too (11 stones 7 pounds). A friend of mine joked that all the Us missing from American spellings are being taken away by U-Haul...
CRT manufacturers would insist it's not the image diagonal, but the outer diameter of the actual tube, plus whatever fudge factor they feel like for marketing purposes. So a 19" monitor might have a viewable diagonal of 45cm, which is less than 18".
The UK hasn't used actual Imperial since at least the 1970's. It's the 25.4 mm metric inch, 454g metric pound and 568ml metric pint. The Imperial versions being slightly different and required rather more decimal places to convert into metric. The US Customary system is similarly defunct in the US.
I just heard 5 and a quarter and thought... *Noooooh, they didn't"... My guess is they thought of "5/4 inch" .. I'm adding this to my collection of stories where americans mess up fractions, right along the infamous failed 1/3 pound burger.
Traditionally, the hyphen was commonly used in mixed numbers, but at some stage it fell out of use. It was intended to prevent a number like this from being interpreted as 51/4. or 12.75.
Even in Europe we used 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 for floppy disks. For us metric users, there are a few things where inches are actually commonly used, like for monitors (24" monitor) for car tires (17" tires). In Germany we don't say inches, we say Zoll, but it's the same unit (2.54 cm). And we usually don't convert. So while anyone can tell me how many inches the tires on their car are, they cannot tell me how many centimeters they are without first using a calculator.
@@lasskinn474 You are correct, car tires are a mixed bag. E.g. a common size is 205/55 R16, and R16 means 16" but 205 and 55 are indeed metric. Also TVs today are sometimes advertised in cm and sometimes in inches but the description usually names both sizes (for me sizes above 24" are meaningless as that's the biggest monitor size I'm familiar with in inches, monitors greater than that were already advertised in cm).
@@lasskinn474 That sounds like a loan word, since I don't think tuuma stands for thumb in Finnish? Might come from the Dutch 'duim' which is probably the most used limb for measuring out inches worldwide historically. I think the Russians use 'dyum' which seems the same loan word. Other languages may use their own actual word for thumb. The French talk about pouces, the Italians about pollici.
@@mjouwbuis swedish is tum so probably from there and that comes from same ancestor languages as dutch I suppose. but tuuma can also mean a thought/thinking/half *ssed planning. "tuumasta toimeen" "from plan(or thought) into action". to be honest I had never thought that an inch is a 'thumb'.
Screens in Germany are specified in cm, size may optionally also be indicated in zoll. It has been like this since at least 15 years. Beware of marketing up- rounded inch sizes, the exact sized 80 cm monitor is not 32 zoll.
So I can speak to the small topic of Radio Shack vs Tandy. Tandy Corporation operated Radio Shack in the USA, Mexico and South and Central America. InterTan operated the Radio Shack and Tandy operations in the remainder of the globe through InterTan Canada (operations in Europe & Canada) and InterTan Australia (operations in Australia). There was a licensing agreement which is noted on some product packaging and documentation. InterTan HQ was in Barrie, Ontario, Canada as was InterTan Canada's HQ. The use of common SKUs globally was part of the agreement and, quite frankly, just made sense. At some point, InterTan began distributing products not sourced from Tandy Corporation. Consequently there are additional SKUs not available in the Tandy Corporation locations (23-xxxx series (batteries) also had 231-xxxx series within InterTan for non-Radio Shack branded batteries, Casio brand products would also have followed the xx1-xxxx nomenclature). InterTan began carrying AST computers (there's a name I bet you forgot!) and ceased carrying Tandy computers due to a disagreement with Tandy Corporation. (This was the case in Canada - not sure about global operations) I worked for both InterTan and Tandy both here in Canada for a number of years. Thankfully I completed serving my time in retail. I'm out on good behaviour (and enjoying life on the outside). 😁
Back about 2015 or so we went to Kihei, Maui and I noticed on the map that they still had Radio Shack there. So we all went & bought up 1 each of several hobby electronic DIY kits. There was a McDonalds on the other side of the parking lot, and the whole neighborhood was overrun by feral chickens. That was one of the best days we had in Hawaii! maps.app.goo.gl/EwtJNztVCYU18zBn6 Here in Canada we still have Tandy except they have all gone back to their leather craft roots: maps.app.goo.gl/rFb3QPKFrU45QvVK9
I remember AST fondly. After sharing a Commodore 64 with my older siblings and being gifted an Amga 600, my first self-purchased PC was an AST Bravo MX in 1999. *Specs:* Windows 98, 500MHz Pentium III, 128MB RAM, 20GB Western Digital hard drive, Diamond Viper V550 video card, onboard audio, Hitachi 4×/24× DVD-ROM/CD-ROM drive, V.90 modem, 19-inch AST CRT monitor, basic AST keyboard and mouse, low-end Altec Lansing speakers. *Price:* US$2,228 - about US$4,250 (CA$5,830) in today's money. A bargain at the time!
I worked in the distribution warehouse in Barrie, Ontario for just over 25 years. My first job there was in Computer QC where we took incoming shipments of computers and tested a percentage to ensure they worked. We also tested new software to make sure they worked on Tandy computers. Those disks are from before my time 😅. When I started, TRS-80s were pretty much discontinued and we were well into the Tandy PCs. I stayed from when Radio Shack was two words, and when it was one (RadioShack). Through Genexxa and the purchase of InterTan by Circuit City out from under Tandy's nose. Through the lawsuit from Tandy to the rebrand to The Source by Circuit City. And from when C City went bust to the sale to Bell and the re-rebrand to The Source. So many changes.
Robin - you are one of my favourite youtuber off all time. In fact, after this video, you may well be one of favourite person of all time. As others have mentioned you have a rare gift for making "boring" topics captivating and entertaining - and one does almost always learn a lot from watching a video from you. While I enjoy most of your videos a lot, this one may be the finest of them all - I simply couldn’t help smiling like a schoolgirl at a Justin Bieber concert, when you revealed how you've been obsessed getting with something as (to "normal people”) as seemingly point-, worth-, and use-less as a poorly labeled box of floppydisks. Truly a man after my own heart. And a double high-5 to your guest - it cracked me up when he "realised" that he was doing it all wrong, in an 8-bit show and tell video - and switched to filming in "Robin-perspective" (Thanks to you, henceforth (the) Robin shall be known as the coolest of all birds .. maybe with the exception of ducklings - because they are the cutest creatures in existence.)
Sometimes I worry that I've gone too far with the nerdiness, and then I get reassuring comments like this :) Thank you. And yes, Ken really delivered with his segment, I got a laugh out of it.
In South America where always it's been metric system we referred to floppies as 5.25 or 3.5; nobody called them by their metric equivalent nor even bothered converted the measurement to cms from inches.
Interesting. Here in Europe where thing is normally very strict metric, the discs were sold as 5.25 and 3.5 inch, never heard about centimeters. Probably because that was seen as the "model" more than dimensions you actually need to use for something but rather ensuring it is compatible with your disk drive.
Love that you showed that how to measure like a Canadian chart. Someone at work, not born in Canada, showed it to me a while ago, and I was like, yeah, what? It's easy, see :D
Thanks for this walk down memory lane. I remember when we started converting to metric and I am one of those Canadians that uses both systems like in that chart you showed. I did get a chuckle when @CanadianRetroThings said "in the proper Canadian way and the proper French way". Is Canadian a language that I am not aware of? I am fluent in both official languages of Canada and found it funny how Canadian French is just categorized as French. (and yes we spell categorized with a 'z' like the Americans) ;-)
@@MrDannyDetail The inch was redefined as exactly 2.54 cm when the International Yard was adopted. Previously, the exact length of an inch varied depending on what reference object was available (a problematic situation to say the least). Lately, efforts have been made to define the metric system in terms of universal physical constants, so as to not depend on any specific object.
@@MrDannyDetailthey are "entirely different systems " - yes, but now some units in one system (at least the length/ distance units like inch, foot, yard and mile) are defined according to the other system. At some point in time in the 20th century, they took what was then an inch, rounded it to the tenth of a millimetre - resulting in 25.4mm - and defined this to be the exact length of an inch. The definitions of foot, yard, etc. follow logically from this definition of an inch (e.g. 1 foot = 12 inch = 12*25.4 mm = 304.8mm = 30.48 cm)
My understanding is 3.5" is also a converted measurement (since it comes from Japan). The 2.54 cm/in conversion is exact - that's the literal legal definition of the US inch, IIRC.
I remember seeing those disks in Tandy Australia and scratching my head as to how they got that 3.17cm. Couldn't for the life of me work it out. Thanks for settling that little Tandy error.
To make this even more confusing, there is a metric pound, which is 500 grams compared to the 454 grams for the imperial pound. We use it quite a lot in Germany.
I've never looked into why, but the Canadian gallon is/was bigger than the US gallon, something like 4.54 litres vs. 3.78 litres. So our cars always had higher MPG (miles per gallon).
@@8_Bit The story I have heard, is that the British were shipping rum to the USA, and some of the cargo would disappear (the sailors drank it) while crossing the ocean. To make the numbers add up, the US gallon had to be smaller than the British gallon.
When switching to metric, local authorities tried to redefine old words as much as possible. In The Netherlands, the 'duim' (dutch variant of zoll) wasn't standardised to 2,54cm but to 1cm instead. Luckily that didn't catch on, people just called it centimeter. Dutch pounds were standardised the same as in Germany, to 500 gram. This makes some kind of sense since it's close and pounds weren't standardised amongst themselves anyway... But the ounce was standardised to 100 gram, instead of 30-ish or let's say 50 gram. That did actually catch on for some reason. While still widely in use amongst older people some years ago, I think metric pounds and ounces are disappearing rapidly in The Netherlands now, though.
There's also the metric cup for which I've seen both 225 mL and 250 mL. (Actual ≈ 236.6 mL) Not sure how big one _Tasse_ usually is in Germany (I _think_ it's 250 mL).
Interesting video as always. Ken was a hoot; I'll have to check out his channel as well. I too am fascinated (intrigued? entertained?) by weird misspellings in packaging and signs. If I come across any, I'll send them your way.
What is usually Imperial unless you're buying stuff from Europe like Baltic Birch plywood, and that stuff sold in 5 ft x 5 ft sheets but millimeters are used for the thickness
It was written and recorded by me and my daughter. If you search for "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs: A Soundtrack" on Bandcamp you'll find it. Thanks for the interest.
I love things like this! I have a package from around 2000 for some fancy CD jewel cases I bought to put Christmas disks into. They clearly state that they "Automatically become portable when carried"
7:26 That never occurred to me. I'm one of those rare Americans who like the idea of switching to metric, but using the same units as the designer makes sense.
I still remember buying my first pack of diskettes from Radio Shack, I got a pack of 3 diskettes for $20, which took me forever to save up. In my hand I held 3 x 360kB of storage which was equivalent to more than 1 MB of space! I remember thinking what a bargain since they used to sell huge 10MB and 20MB hard disk packs for thousands of dollars, and here $20 would get you a full 1MB -- at an ordinary store checkout.
Yes, and it's amazing how quickly those diskettes came down in price. There were so many manufacturers that prices were driven down to about $1/each if bought in a 10-pack.
For some reason, all of the measurements you listed reminded my of the song "Inches, Feet, Miles" by Heywood Banks. It's a fun song, and I'm sure you know someone it is referring to. Have a great weekend, everyone!
In the mid '70s traveling from Detroit to Buffalo we stopped in London. I saw in the local paper that butchers were facing jail time if they sold 0.907 kg of ground beef to their customers. One would think if the weight was correct the butcher would not be strip searched and thrown in the slammer, but this is not the way Canada rolls.
@CanadianRetroThings , when I was young I used to have many floppy disks (disquettes in French from France, with QU not K) with simple/double side (simple/double face and not 'coté') and simple/double density (simple/double densité). But we never used 'cm' to talk about disk sizes (3" , 3.5" , 5.25" , 8"). Even the density was used in inches : TPI - Track per Inch. Idem with screen sizes in inches... Another very strange translation is FR:silicium that is EN:silicon, but FR:silicone is a very different thing (even if FR:silicone is produced with FR:silicium). How do you manage Silicon/Silicium in Canada ?
Here in Australia WE are fully metricized. CRT TVs were typically sold in cm but modern flat panel TVs are sold in inches. Computer monitors were always sold in inches. Floppy discs always inches. Optical discs are metric as per the standards. Really just ends up being what's most convenient for the industry. Older generations will use ft+in for height but younger generations and medical professionals use cm.
_"Really just ends up being what's most convenient for the industry."_ It gets extra fun when it comes to electronics design. Through-hole parts (e.g. DIP) have traditionally had their pins spaced in tenths of an inch¹; this continues to be the case for compatibility reasons. However, surface mount parts tend to use metric pin spacing although there are exceptions such as SOIC parts which are half the size of DIPs and have 0.05" pin spacing. Gets to be a bit of a mess when one is designing a board that mixes the two. ¹ The exception is parts manufactured in the Eastern Bloc. Those usually used 2.5 mm pin spacing though parts intended for the non-Comecon market used 2.54 mm spacing. Currently I think it's only Russia that still manufactures parts with 2.5 mm spacing.
I had that exact model TRS-80 CoCo II, with the "melted" keyboard! Gawd, that brings back fond memories of keying in what seemed endless pages of BASIC programs from Rainbow and Hot CoCo magazines. Good times.
Your point about respecting the original units in standardized products reminds me of how in Spain, years ago I used to watch English-speaking documentary type programs on lots of topics and they insisted in converting any monetary ammount mentioned into Euros for no reason whatsoever, so you ended up hearing how this American car from the 1930s cost so many Euros when it came out, meaning they got the 1930s dollar ammount and converted it to euros according to whatever the conversion rate was at the time of the show being translated. Or how this or that civil architectural project in the 1800 in England cost so many Euros rather than pounds. And no, it's not like they said the original price in the original currency and then provided an inflation adjusted conversion or any such thing, or gave any reference on how much that represented compared to the average wages of the time or any such thing. No, just "this many Euros", that's it! I don't think I need to explain just how idiotically pointless this was.
Great video. TY. In my Infocom collection I have the Canadian version of the 1st six games made that Commodore had the rights to sell. The U.S. versions were just cardboard folded into folder by the Canadian ones were in nice clam shell cases and had all the writing in both English and French.
16:00 no, the hyphen/ dash does not clarify something, rather to the contrary: It looks like a minus sign, so now they seem to have written the equivalent of 4.75" instead of 5.25"
The hyphen was common in that use when you didn't have a font where you only had one height of numeral. It by convention separated the units digits from the fractional digits.
This is the reason that when I taught calculus, I banned students from writing mixed numbers (I told them it was only for baking). 5 + 1/4 != 51/4 != 5 * 1/4
The "comPOSite" vs. "COMposite" thing is interesting - both sides are wrong half the time. Emphasis on the first syllable makes it a noun, emphasis on the second syllable makes it a verb. When you comPOSite two things you end up with a COMposite. (See also REcord/reCORD, REfuse/reFUSE, EXport/exPORT, etc.)
Whether a word which could be either a noun or a verb is a noun or a verb is entirely dependent on syntax and context and has absolutely nothing to do with pronunciation.
@@radio.computer Technically, sure - after all, when written there is no inflection - but in actual *usage* it's surprisingly common. It's not a "rule" (there are no such things in English) and you don't *have* to do it, but it would sound pretty weird if, say, you put your vinyl on a reCORD player.
In France, they are allowed to use inches for disk and screen sizes, because there is a proper French word for "inch". Thus, "disque souple de trois pouces et demi" for 3.5" disks. The joke's on them though, because 3.5" is a rough imperial equivalent of EXACTLY 9cm.
you'd think, but nah; it's another spelling thing like the "ou". Noun. curb (plural curbs) (American spelling, Canadian spelling) A concrete margin along the edge of a road; a kerb (UK, Australia, New Zealand) A raised margin along the edge of something.
Thanks for another very niche yet intriguing video Robin! I particularly enjoyed the Coco "emulation" at the closing. The cursor seemed to change -color- colour too quickly however, unless you were trying to emulate the Coco 3 double-speed mode as well. Incidentally the Colour Computer 3 (alone in the Color Computer lineup) also features built-in 40- and 80-column text modes, thankfully sans the multicoloured cursor. The "metrification" began while I was being born so I was busy, but it was a time of tremendous strife and opposition to "metrication" I would later -realise- realize. There was widespread confusion and ignorance of metric units among whom I then considered older folks, yet I was taught _only_ the metric or "S.I." system of units in school. To this day my understanding of US and Imperial measures is limited. The flowchart by pac0man is hilarious though not completely accurate I would say.
In the USA we by plywood in 4'x8' sheets. The thickness has been secretly metric-fied though. A 1/2" sheet of plywood is now 12mm, 3/4" is 19mm, etc. I agree with you Robin, if something was designed in inches it is best to stick with inches, same for things designed in mm. I design a LOT of stuff in CAD and use both conventions in the same designs all the time. If part A is inches and part B is mm they get dimensioned in the same units.
Funny. My first instance of imperial to metric conversion was at my first CAD job. We were working on a piece of equipment for Tetra Pak - specifically an industrial touch screen control unit with a 9" LCD screen. Pretty cool stuff back in 1994. IIRC those panels ran about $2000 back then - and they were dim and washed out. Anyhow, the 2.54 conversion factor got drilled into my head really quick. With all the conversions back and forth I'm surprised we didn't have more issues.
@@RandomBitzzz It all depends on the amount of rounding that occurs. Years ago, I put in a surface mount assembly line for my employer. They had one SMT board being assembled out of house at the time which had a high failure rate. Looking at the BOM and PCB layout and then looking at an assembled PCB under magnification it became apparent what the problem was. The TSSOP SRAM chip had a lead pitch of 0.5mm (0.197") which the mfg converted to 0.020" on the data sheet. If pin 1 was square on the pad, pin 20 would be half off the pad. Any slight misalignment would cause a RAM failure. It would have made more sense to have kept the original metric dimensions of the package or at least consulted the actual JDEC specs for it.
@@HeyBirt yeap. I wish I could've stuck with one system, but management insisted I kept converting to and from. You definitely can lose precision when converting. Reminds me of the analog days when you'd make a copy of a copy of a copy of an audio cassette.
I've noticed that too when building furniture. Sheet thicknesses are almost always a round number of mm and not the stated fraction of inch; for the larger dimensions sometimes it's a round number of inches and other times a round number of cm. Because of this one always has to measure the specific piece of wood that you're purchasing to make sure its dimensions will work with one's design.
I'm surprised they went with a "-" and not a ".". They were playing a dangerous game. The Tandy translator might have thought it was 5 minus 1/4. It feels like we came too close to having 12.06cm disks.
That calculator using two D size batteries is hilarious. It just shows how inefficient the electronics and LED displays were back then. Nowadays it's hard to find anything, including toys, that actually require D batteries anymore.
Well Ackchyually(TM) that calculator uses a VFD (Vacuum Fluorescent Display), same as in old VCRs. It's pretty much a vacuum tube which requires heating (which consumes quite a bit of current) as well as semi-exotic semi-high voltages (around 20-30V oops that would make it -10V because some Canadian math professor interprets the "to" dash as a minus sign). It's also not a pocket calculator, it's a small table calculator, designed for people who use these pretty much all day (table calculators this size running on mains are surprisingly common - although these often also have a printer built in). Using D cells means you don't need to change the batteries every couple hours if you're running it all day long.
Me looking at the modern world : "people get too worked up about things" Me looking at a 3.17cm floppy disk : "why do we even have prisons if we're not using them?"
If you look at the recording media window, the opening is approx 1.25" or 3.17 cm. The old 5-1/4 disk used 48 TPI with 40 tracks format but the window is a little oversized.(1-5/16" or 3.33 cm) Open reel tape comes in ¼-inch, ½-inch, 1-inch and even 2-inch widths and why not compare it to circular 40 track digital tape.
Even here in metric Europe (i.e. anywhere that is not the British Isles) we still measure the size of screens and disks in inches and nothing else. The only exception I could think of is the size of various dedicated audio and video disks such as CDs, DVDs, etc. and vinyl records where we use a mix, but then again, we would only give either measurement, and only if it is absolutely necessary.
The ANSI (__AMERICAN__ National Standards Institute) Standard X3.137 defines "One- & Two-Sided, Unformatted, 90-mm (3.5-in) 5,3-Tpmm (135-TPI), Flexible Disks". The dimensions are stated as "physically 90mm x 94mm x 3.3 mm, with a 85.80 mm diameter magnetic disk in the cartridge". And X3.162 specifies "Unformatted Flexible Disk Cartridge For Information Interchange, 5.25 In (130 Mm), 96 Tracks Per Inch (3.8 Tracks Per Millimeter)". So ... I guess the 5 1/4" and 3,5" are the approximation for the convenience of the non-metric world … I also measured one of the floppies here and found the 3,5" ones to be *exactly* 90.03 mm.
If you think changes are bad measuring diskettes then try a hot water tank. In Canada legally they are labelled in litres, big box stores also list them in us gallons, and made in Canada hot water tanks are in litres and uk imperial gallons.
This particular problem in converting units is known as 'False Precision'. It happens when a rougher measurement is converted to units that don't divide evenly, and you get decimal places of precision that are not appropriate. For instance "that's about a 30 foot drop. Or about a 9.144 meter drop". Just say 10 meters. There is not any precision. It gets particularly egrarious when a work uses converted units and omitts the units they were converted from.
Back in the old days I thought the terms "parentheses" and "brackets" were mutually exclusive, because of the way teachers would teach it. But then a handful of years ago I learned that the bracket is actually a _category,_ and the parenthesis (singular of parentheses) IS actually a type of bracket, as are braces. So this kind of bracket: [ ] is the _rectangle_ bracket. So yeah, you're right, parentheses are brackets... one of the types!
In my first formal exposure to coding (in elementary school) the terms used were _parentheses_ ( ), _brackets_ [ ], and _curly brackets_ { }. Occasionally { } were called _curly braces_ but it wasn't common (likewise _square brackets_ being used for [ ] when clarity was needed). In English class I'm pretty sure the terms used were _parentheses_ (for, well, parentheticals) and _brackets_ (in quotations or for references). Oddly, the definitive guide that we used, _Warriner's English Grammar and Composition: First course,_ makes no mention of them (perhaps a follow-on volume does). Another textbook from the same time, _Basic English Revisited: A student handbook,_ uses the terms _parentheses_ ( ), _brackets_ [ ], and _braces_ { }.
@@alexhajnal107: "Curly brackets" vs. "brackets" doesn't make sense, because that's like saying that "curly brackets don't count as brackets even though the word 'brackets' is part of the term." And then "curly braces" is even worse because there's no non-curly version of them to be comparing against. And even [ ] aren't square brackets; you can plainly see that they're longer in one dimension than in the other, in every font there is out there (at least as far as I've ever seen). I'll have to see if I can get reminded from Keys for Writers if that's where I saw that [ ] had the term of (so-called) " 'square' [rectangular/rectangle] brackets" or if that calls them "straight brackets" or whatever, and if that's where I learned that those 3 types of container punctuation are all in the category of brackets in general. But I know that someone of some language authority did teach that.
@@HelloKittyFanMan Out of curiosity I took a look at some other sources from the era and slightly later. The _HP85 Pocket Guide_ (the first machine I coded on) uses _parentheses_ for ( ) and both _brackets_ and _square brackets_ for [ ]. _Getting Started With Extended Color Basic_ for the CoCo 2 uses _parentheses_ and (in one place) _brackets_ for ( ). Neither machine has { } in its character set so I must have picked that term up later. Some later sources: _Atari ST GFA Basic Version 3 Interpreter_ manual (translated/printed in the UK) uses _brackets_ for ( ). _C++ in Plain English_ uses _parentheses_ for ( ), _brackets_ for [ ], and _braces_ for { }. _MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers_ uses _parentheses_ for ( ) and _square brackets_ for [ ] (in the index _brackets_ refers to the _square brackets_ entry).
@@alexhajnal107: Oh, and "less/greater than" < > are also called angle brackets; from the Grammar Monster and Byju's, along with those others being in that category: the _four_ shapes of brackets. So obviously even though there is some inconsistency, there's also enough agreement and similarity that it's safe to say that's the category of brackets does exist and that these are the 4 shapes of them. (Yeah, I meant to include < > before; I wonder why I forgot to.)
@@HelloKittyFanMan I took a look at the references I mentioned. < and > are only named in _C++,_ _HP85,_ and _Extended Color Basic._ In all three they're referred to as _less than_ and _greater than._ Personally, I don't recall having heard them referred to as _angle brackets_ until after the advent of SGML's progeny, namely HTML and XML. (To be pedantic, _angle brackets_ are properly 〈 〉.)
Just a note: The reason that in somplaces its called Tandy is because in (at least) the UK there was (still?) a guy that ran "Radio Shack" stores. He didn't want to sell/trade/whatever his trademark. I believe (it was told to me by a UK guy) that he got paid if they imported a "Radio Shack" item.
Maybe done during the transition from 8" to 5.25" disks? 8 / 2.54 yields 3.1496, which seems too close to 3.17 to be coincidence. But with 'Radio Shack' rounding, (truncation) that comes to 3.14. So, your explanation is closer. I found a hilarious mislabeling at a convenience store where they sold fried chicken gizzards and livers at their hot bar. They were sold in a paper box labeled, "Better Than the Best". Someone actually got paid to come up with that package labeling. Better than the best, huh?
G'day Robin! Love y'work, as always. We too collect photographic evidence of such errors (2:12), which will eventually be part of a show we have in the works, but, surely the trespassing sign at 2:19 is correct, wouldn't you think? (i.e. 'NO TRESPASSING AT NIGHT')
I think the trespassing sign is oxymoronic because if trespassing is allowed, then it ceases to be trespassing; permission is part of the definition of the word. Kind of like a sign that says "no stealing without permission from the owner".
In the U.S. Bottled water, soda and hard liquor is sold by metric units, but beer, milk, gasoline and are in imperial. Cans of soda are in 12 ounces. Most food and liquid has both imperial and metric on the package.
Here in Europe / European Union there was a law suit: Sizes of TV sets had to be measured in cm instead of inch. In case of TV sets it made sense as inch (German: Zoll) is not very common, the rest of the Imperial system even less. It resulted in Microsoft Windows 95 packages on 8.89 cm diskettes or CD-ROM, and monitor manufacturers (then still CRTs) selling their products in inch and cm. Meanwhile it is over, we can buy our displays in inch again. Hard disk form factors are 3½" and 2.5", but slowly disappearing.
Over here in Australia we went metric before I was born and got rid of the old funny money similar to England. But they still give TV/Smarphone screens in Inches and sometime even newborn baby weight in pounds. We spell Colour the same as well and do the Aluminium with the I in it.
I think I've seen pizza sizes given in inches in Australia too? And occasional Fahrenheit references like the Midnight Oil lyrics "temperature in the shade had reached 110 again"
@@8_Bit Yes that is true about the pizza slices,, but one thing is funny old money works best for songs like the Proclaimer's Walk 500 Miles. In metric it would be Walk 804.672 Km. One thing for sure its not hot right now.
I had a box of those back in the day! I didn't notice it till years later that the conversion was totally wrong till I got another box alongside them where the conversion was right. There is a slim chance they're still in my parents computer desk. If they are, when I visit them you'll hear from me. I could never figure out where 3.17 came from. Your theory is probably it.
Noah Webster of dictionary fame is the reason behind our weird spelling. He wasn’t even really a lexicographer. He was a politician with a bizarre idea that America needed to have its own language. His dictionary caught on in the early 1900s once the modern K-12 school system became common. There are even parts of our constitution that spell things the “proper” way He also accidentally caused the zee pronunciation of Z. It was a fad in New England (and ironically, parts of Canada) in the 1800s but not really anywhere else until the 1880s thanks to phonograph records of the alphabet song.
Moi ce qui m'inquiète le plus c'est qu'au Canada, les disquettes n'ont qu'un seul coté. Par ici, toutes ces disquettes sont de forme carrée et ont donc quatre cotés. « What worries me the most is that in Canada, floppy disks have one side only. Around here, all these floppy disks are square in shape and therefore have four sides. »
I'm from the French side of Canada, and yeah the French labels are pretty much obligatory if you want to sell your wares in the province of Québec. Sometimes we get some hilarious translations that makes absolutely no sense (particularly the one at 2:31, "rasoirs lame" which is very incorrect and should be "lames de rasoir"), but I'm impressed the diskettes have very accurate translations - did they consult with the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF)? The box at 5:42, although having the correct metric measurement, has a typo, though: the accent on the "á" should be on the other way around like this: à, which the blue box with the obviously incorrect metric conversion has, ironically enough, correct :)
In UK everything is mixed up as well. Fuel is sold in liters but fuel consumption is always in MPG (miles per gallon). Beer and milk are sold per pint but all other drinks are in liters. Timber? Imagine that 2" by 4" timber joist actually measures 47/100mm Pipes (tubes) are mostly in mm but thread diameters on those pipes are mostly in inches
As a fellow Canuck, yes we kind of live in both systems, metric and Imperial. That will never change unless the U.S. goes metric. Pigs may fly by that time.
I had boxes of them that I donated to good will when I moved from washington state.. I only kept a new box of 3m single sided single density 3.5" disks.. Never seen a box of them and I couldn't pass it up.
8:02 in Canada, screens have their size measured from Under the bezel, resulting in an actual (visible) size that's about a half or three quarters of an inch less.
What a COCO CHEATER!!! Actually it was kinda cute… But the font was all wrong!!! Appreciate the nod to us Die-Hard CoCo Users. Also: Today we learned how they teach fractions in Texas.
That’s funny, in Australia we use metric but I never saw it used for floppy disks. In the past, I have seen television screens measured in cm but now we mostly use inches for displays.
One thing I forgot to say didn't they almost lose a new airliner because of a metric/imperial mix up and the tanks we not filled properly and they had to glide to an unused airport. I think it was Gimli? .
yes, the so called "Gimli Glider". Because of wrong unit conversion, they ended up starting with x lb of fuel, instead of x kg of fuel ... which meant that after about h half the travel distance, their engines suddenly stopped because they run out of fuel.
So I didn't get it the first time you said it -- when talking about multiplying 5 by 1/4 --- i.e. as to why they'd do that. But when you talked about the dash between 5 and 1/4, then it made sense. They basically interpreted 5 1/4 to mean five 1/4 which is 1.25 and then converted that to get 3.17.
I'm still confounded by an oil pressure sensor I have that is on an... American built, Japanese based car, that uses some obscure British pipe fitting thread. The whole car is metric otherwise. I do not understand HOW that happened, when at the time the car was built they'd already done the switch to get rid of the "standard" measurement and bolts.
Screen diagonal size was funny anyway. Most of the time you got a tube size rather than viewable size. Suddenly 15” LCD was the same size as 17” CRT. Here in Poland we used to measure TV in inches (and we still do) but for some years now we also have it in centimeters
This is thanks to EU. But in case of Germany it was quite useful in the 1990ies as TV sets suddenly were measured in inch. Computer displays were and are measured in inch, with a short time measured in cm, too. Some vendors still add the cm to the displays.
Noah Webster's spelling book (before his dictionary) was only behind the Bible in sales, and is largely responsible for the spelling we use in the U.S.
Thanks for letting me be part of this video! Also, I have that exact same calculator and still use it all the time.
Just subscribed. :)
You did a great. Job. I just subbed. Us Tiny Tubers need to stick together. 😅
@@50shadesofbeige88 Thanks for the sub!
@@DavidYoud Thank you!
Subscribed! I'll even accept that Canadians are more polite than Brits
The greatest thing in conversion I've seen was in a documentary where they said the temperature got warmer by 2°F (-16.7°C)
Haha, they converted as if the relative change was an absolute? That's actually a pretty interesting mistake!
@@8_Bitit's pretty common too, I've seen it several times
That is why it is tough to be Canadian. The temperature goes up in the US, and down here in Canada!
Fahrenheit and Celsius are the same.
-40°F = -40°C
How about an "African-American and White photograph"?
There are 3175200 seconds in 5.25 weeks, so I think they accidentally converted weeks to mega seconds.
I feel an odd mix of joy that I now know this, with sadness that nobody else will leave an opening for me to mention it in casual conversation.
By Jove ... I think you've got it!
Nice catch
You did such a great job of taking what most would consider a dull subject and turning it into a full video. Bravo Robin. This is the most underrated retro channel.
He is basically Gandalf - he does exactly what he means to :)
I'm all the way across the ocean in Australia and we use the metric system entirely here but I have never in my life seen a disk measured in cm.
I've seen optical discs (CDs, etc) labelled in cm, but I'm pretty sure that's how they're originally defined in the relevant standards.
The same for Germany. But we have the old unit "Zoll" which is an inch. So everybody knows what 3.5" is. Or a flat screen 70".
Radians perhaps? 1!
That's because the actual size of the disk doesn't matter, it's more of a type descriptor
@@axemanracing6222 Well we know about disks, but we didn't know about screen sizes in inches for a long time! As a kid of 1984, we measured CRT TVs always in centimeters! Only since the invention of flat screens and computer monitors in general, we kind of shifted over to inches.
So back in the day, it would have been important for any "metric country" to have cm on their TV packaging or advertisement, and have it to the first decimal point, so it looks bigger than that of the other brand.
BEDMAS sounds like a holiday where you get to spend the whole day sleeping in, and I am so on board with that right now... 😂
Drake celebrates Bedmas instead of Christmas.
...Nobody's going to get that joke.
I mean... you could make that joke about any Canadian right? -- Why Drake...? Am I missing something? -- Does he also hate Christmas or something?
@@BrainSlugs83 "I only love my bed and my momma, I'm sorry"
Thanks, Robin. I love these 'abstract' videos of yours. They are so informative and this one played-out like a "Ripley's Believe it or Not" episode, although not quite as dark lol!
CRT screens were typically measured on the diagonal size of the screen - so that 5-inch measurement is from top left to bottom right, minus the overlap/border.
Here in the UK we still use a mixture of Imperial and metric measurements. Typically we do height and distances in Imperial (5 feet 10, 500 miles) and weight too (11 stones 7 pounds).
A friend of mine joked that all the Us missing from American spellings are being taken away by U-Haul...
CRT manufacturers would insist it's not the image diagonal, but the outer diameter of the actual tube, plus whatever fudge factor they feel like for marketing purposes. So a 19" monitor might have a viewable diagonal of 45cm, which is less than 18".
In the 80s the storeroom guy at my dad's work measured the width of bolts and screws in imperial but their length in metric.
The UK hasn't used actual Imperial since at least the 1970's.
It's the 25.4 mm metric inch, 454g metric pound and 568ml metric pint. The Imperial versions being slightly different and required rather more decimal places to convert into metric.
The US Customary system is similarly defunct in the US.
@@markevans2294 And yet we still buy our drinks in the Pub in Pints and our road signs are all still in Miles.
5 1/4" to cm ? Mmm oh yes 5 x 0.25 = 1.25" x 2.54 = 3.175 cm ... I'll keep it two decimals and call it 3.17 cm disks. I'm getting good at math.
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dat mayd mai braenz hert
It goes the other way round. The disk format ist exactly 13 cm. So that makes 13/2.54 = 5.12 Inches.
@@VolkerBrueggemann 🤣
I just heard 5 and a quarter and thought... *Noooooh, they didn't"... My guess is they thought of "5/4 inch" ..
I'm adding this to my collection of stories where americans mess up fractions, right along the infamous failed 1/3 pound burger.
Traditionally, the hyphen was commonly used in mixed numbers, but at some stage it fell out of use. It was intended to prevent a number like this from being interpreted as 51/4. or 12.75.
Even in Europe we used 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 for floppy disks. For us metric users, there are a few things where inches are actually commonly used, like for monitors (24" monitor) for car tires (17" tires). In Germany we don't say inches, we say Zoll, but it's the same unit (2.54 cm). And we usually don't convert. So while anyone can tell me how many inches the tires on their car are, they cannot tell me how many centimeters they are without first using a calculator.
in finnish it's tuuma. but tuuma is an inch. tires are weird, the width and thickness of the rubber itself is in mm as far as I know everywhere.
@@lasskinn474 You are correct, car tires are a mixed bag. E.g. a common size is 205/55 R16, and R16 means 16" but 205 and 55 are indeed metric. Also TVs today are sometimes advertised in cm and sometimes in inches but the description usually names both sizes (for me sizes above 24" are meaningless as that's the biggest monitor size I'm familiar with in inches, monitors greater than that were already advertised in cm).
@@lasskinn474 That sounds like a loan word, since I don't think tuuma stands for thumb in Finnish? Might come from the Dutch 'duim' which is probably the most used limb for measuring out inches worldwide historically. I think the Russians use 'dyum' which seems the same loan word. Other languages may use their own actual word for thumb. The French talk about pouces, the Italians about pollici.
@@mjouwbuis swedish is tum so probably from there and that comes from same ancestor languages as dutch I suppose. but tuuma can also mean a thought/thinking/half *ssed planning. "tuumasta toimeen" "from plan(or thought) into action". to be honest I had never thought that an inch is a 'thumb'.
Screens in Germany are specified in cm, size may optionally also be indicated in zoll. It has been like this since at least 15 years. Beware of marketing up- rounded inch sizes, the exact sized 80 cm monitor is not 32 zoll.
Maybe the 3.17 is the measurement of all the diskettes stacked. (who knows)
So I can speak to the small topic of Radio Shack vs Tandy.
Tandy Corporation operated Radio Shack in the USA, Mexico and South and Central America. InterTan operated the Radio Shack and Tandy operations in the remainder of the globe through InterTan Canada (operations in Europe & Canada) and InterTan Australia (operations in Australia). There was a licensing agreement which is noted on some product packaging and documentation. InterTan HQ was in Barrie, Ontario, Canada as was InterTan Canada's HQ.
The use of common SKUs globally was part of the agreement and, quite frankly, just made sense. At some point, InterTan began distributing products not sourced from Tandy Corporation. Consequently there are additional SKUs not available in the Tandy Corporation locations (23-xxxx series (batteries) also had 231-xxxx series within InterTan for non-Radio Shack branded batteries, Casio brand products would also have followed the xx1-xxxx nomenclature).
InterTan began carrying AST computers (there's a name I bet you forgot!) and ceased carrying Tandy computers due to a disagreement with Tandy Corporation. (This was the case in Canada - not sure about global operations)
I worked for both InterTan and Tandy both here in Canada for a number of years.
Thankfully I completed serving my time in retail. I'm out on good behaviour (and enjoying life on the outside). 😁
Back about 2015 or so we went to Kihei, Maui and I noticed on the map that they still had Radio Shack there. So we all went & bought up 1 each of several hobby electronic DIY kits. There was a McDonalds on the other side of the parking lot, and the whole neighborhood was overrun by feral chickens. That was one of the best days we had in Hawaii!
maps.app.goo.gl/EwtJNztVCYU18zBn6
Here in Canada we still have Tandy except they have all gone back to their leather craft roots:
maps.app.goo.gl/rFb3QPKFrU45QvVK9
I remember AST fondly. After sharing a Commodore 64 with my older siblings and being gifted an Amga 600, my first self-purchased PC was an AST Bravo MX in 1999.
*Specs:* Windows 98, 500MHz Pentium III, 128MB RAM, 20GB Western Digital hard drive, Diamond Viper V550 video card, onboard audio, Hitachi 4×/24× DVD-ROM/CD-ROM drive, V.90 modem, 19-inch AST CRT monitor, basic AST keyboard and mouse, low-end Altec Lansing speakers.
*Price:* US$2,228 - about US$4,250 (CA$5,830) in today's money. A bargain at the time!
I worked in the distribution warehouse in Barrie, Ontario for just over 25 years. My first job there was in Computer QC where we took incoming shipments of computers and tested a percentage to ensure they worked. We also tested new software to make sure they worked on Tandy computers. Those disks are from before my time 😅. When I started, TRS-80s were pretty much discontinued and we were well into the Tandy PCs. I stayed from when Radio Shack was two words, and when it was one (RadioShack). Through Genexxa and the purchase of InterTan by Circuit City out from under Tandy's nose. Through the lawsuit from Tandy to the rebrand to The Source by Circuit City. And from when C City went bust to the sale to Bell and the re-rebrand to The Source. So many changes.
got a perfectly placed energizer ad at 6:10
amazing.
Robin - you are one of my favourite youtuber off all time. In fact, after this video, you may well be one of favourite person of all time. As others have mentioned you have a rare gift for making "boring" topics captivating and entertaining - and one does almost always learn a lot from watching a video from you. While I enjoy most of your videos a lot, this one may be the finest of them all - I simply couldn’t help smiling like a schoolgirl at a Justin Bieber concert, when you revealed how you've been obsessed getting with something as (to "normal people”) as seemingly point-, worth-, and use-less as a poorly labeled box of floppydisks. Truly a man after my own heart. And a double high-5 to your guest - it cracked me up when he "realised" that he was doing it all wrong, in an 8-bit show and tell video - and switched to filming in "Robin-perspective" (Thanks to you, henceforth (the) Robin shall be known as the coolest of all birds .. maybe with the exception of ducklings - because they are the cutest creatures in existence.)
Sometimes I worry that I've gone too far with the nerdiness, and then I get reassuring comments like this :) Thank you. And yes, Ken really delivered with his segment, I got a laugh out of it.
In South America where always it's been metric system we referred to floppies as 5.25 or 3.5; nobody called them by their metric equivalent nor even bothered converted the measurement to cms from inches.
Oh, Radio Shack got it wrong? Wait till Sheldon Cooper hears about it.
Interesting. Here in Europe where thing is normally very strict metric, the discs were sold as 5.25 and 3.5 inch, never heard about centimeters. Probably because that was seen as the "model" more than dimensions you actually need to use for something but rather ensuring it is compatible with your disk drive.
Love that you showed that how to measure like a Canadian chart. Someone at work, not born in Canada, showed it to me a while ago, and I was like, yeah, what? It's easy, see :D
Thanks for this walk down memory lane. I remember when we started converting to metric and I am one of those Canadians that uses both systems like in that chart you showed. I did get a chuckle when @CanadianRetroThings said "in the proper Canadian way and the proper French way". Is Canadian a language that I am not aware of? I am fluent in both official languages of Canada and found it funny how Canadian French is just categorized as French. (and yes we spell categorized with a 'z' like the Americans) ;-)
It's not approximately 2.54 cm per inch, it's *exactly* 2.54 cm per inch.
Only if your ruler was made after July 1, 1959.
@@mpf1947 As with all revisions of universal constants, prior instruments require recalibration or replacement, as they will now read incorrectly.
🙃
I'm surprised that there is such a precise conversion, given that they are entirely different systems.
@@MrDannyDetail The inch was redefined as exactly 2.54 cm when the International Yard was adopted. Previously, the exact length of an inch varied depending on what reference object was available (a problematic situation to say the least). Lately, efforts have been made to define the metric system in terms of universal physical constants, so as to not depend on any specific object.
@@MrDannyDetailthey are "entirely different systems " - yes, but now some units in one system (at least the length/ distance units like inch, foot, yard and mile) are defined according to the other system. At some point in time in the 20th century, they took what was then an inch, rounded it to the tenth of a millimetre - resulting in 25.4mm - and defined this to be the exact length of an inch.
The definitions of foot, yard, etc. follow logically from this definition of an inch (e.g. 1 foot = 12 inch = 12*25.4 mm = 304.8mm = 30.48 cm)
My understanding is 3.5" is also a converted measurement (since it comes from Japan).
The 2.54 cm/in conversion is exact - that's the literal legal definition of the US inch, IIRC.
You remember correctly in both cases. (A 3½" disk is 90 mm × 94 mm.)
Sooo... what's wrong with the "No Trespassing" sign at 2:20?
Maybe that picture wasn't taken in Madison, WI where that ordinance applies.
Maybe that the gate is closed when it is obviously day time not between 10pm and 6am..? i.e. "obviously incorrect information", LOL
It's implying that at certain times it's perfectly fine to trespass, perhaps?
Pretty standard for parks around here. No trespassing at night when the park is closed.
Yea, I was having the same thought process as you were working through it, they interpreted it as 5 one quarters, instead of 5 AND one quarter.
I remember seeing those disks in Tandy Australia and scratching my head as to how they got that 3.17cm. Couldn't for the life of me work it out. Thanks for settling that little Tandy error.
To make this even more confusing, there is a metric pound, which is 500 grams compared to the 454 grams for the imperial pound.
We use it quite a lot in Germany.
I've never looked into why, but the Canadian gallon is/was bigger than the US gallon, something like 4.54 litres vs. 3.78 litres. So our cars always had higher MPG (miles per gallon).
@@8_Bit The story I have heard, is that the British were shipping rum to the USA, and some of the cargo would disappear (the sailors drank it) while crossing the ocean. To make the numbers add up, the US gallon had to be smaller than the British gallon.
When switching to metric, local authorities tried to redefine old words as much as possible. In The Netherlands, the 'duim' (dutch variant of zoll) wasn't standardised to 2,54cm but to 1cm instead. Luckily that didn't catch on, people just called it centimeter. Dutch pounds were standardised the same as in Germany, to 500 gram. This makes some kind of sense since it's close and pounds weren't standardised amongst themselves anyway... But the ounce was standardised to 100 gram, instead of 30-ish or let's say 50 gram. That did actually catch on for some reason. While still widely in use amongst older people some years ago, I think metric pounds and ounces are disappearing rapidly in The Netherlands now, though.
There's also the metric cup for which I've seen both 225 mL and 250 mL. (Actual ≈ 236.6 mL) Not sure how big one _Tasse_ usually is in Germany (I _think_ it's 250 mL).
@CyberAtSteam What is confusing is Britain and US can not agree on the size of a gallon. Imperial units are a mess.
Interesting video as always. Ken was a hoot; I'll have to check out his channel as well. I too am fascinated (intrigued? entertained?) by weird misspellings in packaging and signs. If I come across any, I'll send them your way.
I've been arguing for years that my plywood measurement was in Canadian.
What is usually Imperial unless you're buying stuff from Europe like Baltic Birch plywood, and that stuff sold in 5 ft x 5 ft sheets but millimeters are used for the thickness
@@weedmanwestvancouverbc9266 for context, this is a LONG standing inside joke between Robin and I. Sorry if that part wasn't clear ;-)
Interesting End Credits music track... Who composed it?
It was written and recorded by me and my daughter. If you search for "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs: A Soundtrack" on Bandcamp you'll find it. Thanks for the interest.
I love things like this! I have a package from around 2000 for some fancy CD jewel cases I bought to put Christmas disks into. They clearly state that they "Automatically become portable when carried"
Hah!
7:26 That never occurred to me. I'm one of those rare Americans who like the idea of switching to metric, but using the same units as the designer makes sense.
You've set a precedent, end credits should now be served by whichever technology was being shown and told. :)
I've occasionally done that before, but it's sometimes a LOT of trouble (btw, this is actually a C128 pretending to be a CoCo) :)
@@8_Bit Ah, I see it now!
@@DavidYoud (I did use some post production on the real C128 output to make it more CoCo like)
@@8_Bit I bet!! Has to be hard enough to keep up with any version, let alone a different one for each platform you're discussing.
And they _always_ have to feature a song related to the video topic and sung by members of the _8-Bit Show And Tell_ family.
I still remember buying my first pack of diskettes from Radio Shack, I got a pack of 3 diskettes for $20, which took me forever to save up. In my hand I held 3 x 360kB of storage which was equivalent to more than 1 MB of space!
I remember thinking what a bargain since they used to sell huge 10MB and 20MB hard disk packs for thousands of dollars, and here $20 would get you a full 1MB -- at an ordinary store checkout.
Yes, and it's amazing how quickly those diskettes came down in price. There were so many manufacturers that prices were driven down to about $1/each if bought in a 10-pack.
Excellent video and explanation of how things are different in Canada. Thanks to Tandy for these mistakes. They make for fun conversations.
Cool outro! Almost missed it. Super cool Robin!
Love these weird quirks haha. Pretty spot on pronunciation of côté btw
Here, I was thinking that they were calculating the hub in CM and not the whole disk. But, WOW very interesting math they used! LOL!
For some reason, all of the measurements you listed reminded my of the song "Inches, Feet, Miles" by Heywood Banks. It's a fun song, and I'm sure you know someone it is referring to. Have a great weekend, everyone!
Note: there is both an Imperial system and a US Customary system and they're different.
In the mid '70s traveling from Detroit to Buffalo we stopped in London. I saw in the local paper that butchers were facing jail time if they sold 0.907 kg of ground beef to their customers. One would think if the weight was correct the butcher would not be strip searched and thrown in the slammer, but this is not the way Canada rolls.
@CanadianRetroThings , when I was young I used to have many floppy disks (disquettes in French from France, with QU not K) with simple/double side (simple/double face and not 'coté') and simple/double density (simple/double densité). But we never used 'cm' to talk about disk sizes (3" , 3.5" , 5.25" , 8"). Even the density was used in inches : TPI - Track per Inch. Idem with screen sizes in inches...
Another very strange translation is FR:silicium that is EN:silicon, but FR:silicone is a very different thing (even if FR:silicone is produced with FR:silicium). How do you manage Silicon/Silicium in Canada ?
Here in Australia WE are fully metricized. CRT TVs were typically sold in cm but modern flat panel TVs are sold in inches. Computer monitors were always sold in inches. Floppy discs always inches. Optical discs are metric as per the standards. Really just ends up being what's most convenient for the industry. Older generations will use ft+in for height but younger generations and medical professionals use cm.
_"Really just ends up being what's most convenient for the industry."_
It gets extra fun when it comes to electronics design. Through-hole parts (e.g. DIP) have traditionally had their pins spaced in tenths of an inch¹; this continues to be the case for compatibility reasons. However, surface mount parts tend to use metric pin spacing although there are exceptions such as SOIC parts which are half the size of DIPs and have 0.05" pin spacing. Gets to be a bit of a mess when one is designing a board that mixes the two.
¹ The exception is parts manufactured in the Eastern Bloc. Those usually used 2.5 mm pin spacing though parts intended for the non-Comecon market used 2.54 mm spacing. Currently I think it's only Russia that still manufactures parts with 2.5 mm spacing.
I had that exact model TRS-80 CoCo II, with the "melted" keyboard! Gawd, that brings back fond memories of keying in what seemed endless pages of BASIC programs from Rainbow and Hot CoCo magazines. Good times.
I'm definitely nerdy, can't believe I've been fascinated by this video of a box of disks.
Your point about respecting the original units in standardized products reminds me of how in Spain, years ago I used to watch English-speaking documentary type programs on lots of topics and they insisted in converting any monetary ammount mentioned into Euros for no reason whatsoever, so you ended up hearing how this American car from the 1930s cost so many Euros when it came out, meaning they got the 1930s dollar ammount and converted it to euros according to whatever the conversion rate was at the time of the show being translated. Or how this or that civil architectural project in the 1800 in England cost so many Euros rather than pounds.
And no, it's not like they said the original price in the original currency and then provided an inflation adjusted conversion or any such thing, or gave any reference on how much that represented compared to the average wages of the time or any such thing. No, just "this many Euros", that's it!
I don't think I need to explain just how idiotically pointless this was.
Great video. TY. In my Infocom collection I have the Canadian version of the 1st six games made that Commodore had the rights to sell. The U.S. versions were just cardboard folded into folder by the Canadian ones were in nice clam shell cases and had all the writing in both English and French.
16:00 no, the hyphen/ dash does not clarify something, rather to the contrary: It looks like a minus sign, so now they seem to have written the equivalent of 4.75" instead of 5.25"
The hyphen was common in that use when you didn't have a font where you only had one height of numeral. It by convention separated the units digits from the fractional digits.
This is the reason that when I taught calculus, I banned students from writing mixed numbers (I told them it was only for baking). 5 + 1/4 != 51/4 != 5 * 1/4
The "comPOSite" vs. "COMposite" thing is interesting - both sides are wrong half the time. Emphasis on the first syllable makes it a noun, emphasis on the second syllable makes it a verb. When you comPOSite two things you end up with a COMposite. (See also REcord/reCORD, REfuse/reFUSE, EXport/exPORT, etc.)
Whether a word which could be either a noun or a verb is a noun or a verb is entirely dependent on syntax and context and has absolutely nothing to do with pronunciation.
@@radio.computer Technically, sure - after all, when written there is no inflection - but in actual *usage* it's surprisingly common. It's not a "rule" (there are no such things in English) and you don't *have* to do it, but it would sound pretty weird if, say, you put your vinyl on a reCORD player.
Canada is where I was introduced to the *Imperial Gallon* at a gas station in Nova Scotia.
In France, they are allowed to use inches for disk and screen sizes, because there is a proper French word for "inch". Thus, "disque souple de trois pouces et demi" for 3.5" disks. The joke's on them though, because 3.5" is a rough imperial equivalent of EXACTLY 9cm.
Surely, "curb" is a verb, "kerb" is a noun.
you'd think, but nah; it's another spelling thing like the "ou".
Noun. curb (plural curbs) (American spelling, Canadian spelling) A concrete margin along the edge of a road; a kerb (UK, Australia, New Zealand) A raised margin along the edge of something.
Of course it is also a verb. "Park your car at the curb, then curb your dog before he bites someone."
Before 1930, a UK inch used to be 2.5399977 cm. Maybe they used an outdated conversion table. 😄
Where an inch was 0.6cm?
I love your videos Robin. I hope you’re having a nice Summer. Have to be better than here in Norway al least
Thanks. We had some very hot temperatures for a few days, and now it's cold again!
When visited Canada a couple of years ago, the price of fuel was given in $/gallon, but the amount of pumped gas was measured in liters
Robin, another great video! and I like the 'GO COCO' :D
Maybe we should replace the Z80 with a 6809 in a C128 and make this a reality? :)
Thanks for another very niche yet intriguing video Robin! I particularly enjoyed the Coco "emulation" at the closing. The cursor seemed to change -color- colour too quickly however, unless you were trying to emulate the Coco 3 double-speed mode as well. Incidentally the Colour Computer 3 (alone in the Color Computer lineup) also features built-in 40- and 80-column text modes, thankfully sans the multicoloured cursor.
The "metrification" began while I was being born so I was busy, but it was a time of tremendous strife and opposition to "metrication" I would later -realise- realize. There was widespread confusion and ignorance of metric units among whom I then considered older folks, yet I was taught _only_ the metric or "S.I." system of units in school. To this day my understanding of US and Imperial measures is limited. The flowchart by pac0man is hilarious though not completely accurate I would say.
In the USA we by plywood in 4'x8' sheets. The thickness has been secretly metric-fied though. A 1/2" sheet of plywood is now 12mm, 3/4" is 19mm, etc.
I agree with you Robin, if something was designed in inches it is best to stick with inches, same for things designed in mm. I design a LOT of stuff in CAD and use both conventions in the same designs all the time. If part A is inches and part B is mm they get dimensioned in the same units.
Funny. My first instance of imperial to metric conversion was at my first CAD job. We were working on a piece of equipment for Tetra Pak - specifically an industrial touch screen control unit with a 9" LCD screen. Pretty cool stuff back in 1994. IIRC those panels ran about $2000 back then - and they were dim and washed out.
Anyhow, the 2.54 conversion factor got drilled into my head really quick. With all the conversions back and forth I'm surprised we didn't have more issues.
@@RandomBitzzz It all depends on the amount of rounding that occurs. Years ago, I put in a surface mount assembly line for my employer. They had one SMT board being assembled out of house at the time which had a high failure rate.
Looking at the BOM and PCB layout and then looking at an assembled PCB under magnification it became apparent what the problem was. The TSSOP SRAM chip had a lead pitch of 0.5mm (0.197") which the mfg converted to 0.020" on the data sheet. If pin 1 was square on the pad, pin 20 would be half off the pad. Any slight misalignment would cause a RAM failure. It would have made more sense to have kept the original metric dimensions of the package or at least consulted the actual JDEC specs for it.
@@HeyBirt yeap. I wish I could've stuck with one system, but management insisted I kept converting to and from. You definitely can lose precision when converting. Reminds me of the analog days when you'd make a copy of a copy of a copy of an audio cassette.
I've noticed that too when building furniture. Sheet thicknesses are almost always a round number of mm and not the stated fraction of inch; for the larger dimensions sometimes it's a round number of inches and other times a round number of cm. Because of this one always has to measure the specific piece of wood that you're purchasing to make sure its dimensions will work with one's design.
I'm surprised they went with a "-" and not a ".". They were playing a dangerous game. The Tandy translator might have thought it was 5 minus 1/4. It feels like we came too close to having 12.06cm disks.
I love you ending "credit" on the trs!
Also, the "á" in french on the diskette box translation does'ny exist in french
That calculator using two D size batteries is hilarious. It just shows how inefficient the electronics and LED displays were back then. Nowadays it's hard to find anything, including toys, that actually require D batteries anymore.
"Massagers" do not use on mysterious calf pain
Well Ackchyually(TM) that calculator uses a VFD (Vacuum Fluorescent Display), same as in old VCRs. It's pretty much a vacuum tube which requires heating (which consumes quite a bit of current) as well as semi-exotic semi-high voltages (around 20-30V oops that would make it -10V because some Canadian math professor interprets the "to" dash as a minus sign).
It's also not a pocket calculator, it's a small table calculator, designed for people who use these pretty much all day (table calculators this size running on mains are surprisingly common - although these often also have a printer built in). Using D cells means you don't need to change the batteries every couple hours if you're running it all day long.
@@senilyDeluxe Thanks for the Klary-fi-kation™
Me looking at the modern world : "people get too worked up about things"
Me looking at a 3.17cm floppy disk : "why do we even have prisons if we're not using them?"
Maybe it was supposed to be the hole size 😂
Nice seeing you puling out your CoCo.
If you look at the recording media window, the opening is approx 1.25" or 3.17 cm. The old 5-1/4 disk used 48 TPI with 40 tracks format but the window is a little oversized.(1-5/16" or 3.33 cm) Open reel tape comes in ¼-inch, ½-inch, 1-inch and even 2-inch widths and why not compare it to circular 40 track digital tape.
Even here in metric Europe (i.e. anywhere that is not the British Isles) we still measure the size of screens and disks in inches and nothing else. The only exception I could think of is the size of various dedicated audio and video disks such as CDs, DVDs, etc. and vinyl records where we use a mix, but then again, we would only give either measurement, and only if it is absolutely necessary.
The ANSI (__AMERICAN__ National Standards Institute) Standard X3.137 defines "One- & Two-Sided, Unformatted, 90-mm (3.5-in) 5,3-Tpmm (135-TPI), Flexible Disks". The dimensions are stated as "physically 90mm x 94mm x 3.3 mm, with a 85.80 mm diameter magnetic disk in the cartridge".
And X3.162 specifies "Unformatted Flexible Disk Cartridge For Information Interchange, 5.25 In (130 Mm), 96 Tracks Per Inch (3.8 Tracks Per Millimeter)". So ... I guess the 5 1/4" and 3,5" are the approximation for the convenience of the non-metric world …
I also measured one of the floppies here and found the 3,5" ones to be *exactly* 90.03 mm.
If you think changes are bad measuring diskettes then try a hot water tank. In Canada legally they are labelled in litres, big box stores also list them in us gallons, and made in Canada hot water tanks are in litres and uk imperial gallons.
And this is why I always ignore everything but the metric values.
This particular problem in converting units is known as 'False Precision'.
It happens when a rougher measurement is converted to units that don't divide evenly, and you get decimal places of precision that are not appropriate.
For instance "that's about a 30 foot drop. Or about a 9.144 meter drop". Just say 10 meters. There is not any precision.
It gets particularly egrarious when a work uses converted units and omitts the units they were converted from.
Back in the old days I thought the terms "parentheses" and "brackets" were mutually exclusive, because of the way teachers would teach it. But then a handful of years ago I learned that the bracket is actually a _category,_ and the parenthesis (singular of parentheses) IS actually a type of bracket, as are braces. So this kind of bracket: [ ] is the _rectangle_ bracket. So yeah, you're right, parentheses are brackets... one of the types!
In my first formal exposure to coding (in elementary school) the terms used were _parentheses_ ( ), _brackets_ [ ], and _curly brackets_ { }. Occasionally { } were called _curly braces_ but it wasn't common (likewise _square brackets_ being used for [ ] when clarity was needed).
In English class I'm pretty sure the terms used were _parentheses_ (for, well, parentheticals) and _brackets_ (in quotations or for references). Oddly, the definitive guide that we used, _Warriner's English Grammar and Composition: First course,_ makes no mention of them (perhaps a follow-on volume does). Another textbook from the same time, _Basic English Revisited: A student handbook,_ uses the terms _parentheses_ ( ), _brackets_ [ ], and _braces_ { }.
@@alexhajnal107: "Curly brackets" vs. "brackets" doesn't make sense, because that's like saying that "curly brackets don't count as brackets even though the word 'brackets' is part of the term." And then "curly braces" is even worse because there's no non-curly version of them to be comparing against. And even [ ] aren't square brackets; you can plainly see that they're longer in one dimension than in the other, in every font there is out there (at least as far as I've ever seen). I'll have to see if I can get reminded from Keys for Writers if that's where I saw that [ ] had the term of (so-called) " 'square' [rectangular/rectangle] brackets" or if that calls them "straight brackets" or whatever, and if that's where I learned that those 3 types of container punctuation are all in the category of brackets in general. But I know that someone of some language authority did teach that.
@@HelloKittyFanMan Out of curiosity I took a look at some other sources from the era and slightly later.
The _HP85 Pocket Guide_ (the first machine I coded on) uses _parentheses_ for ( ) and both _brackets_ and _square brackets_ for [ ].
_Getting Started With Extended Color Basic_ for the CoCo 2 uses _parentheses_ and (in one place) _brackets_ for ( ).
Neither machine has { } in its character set so I must have picked that term up later. Some later sources:
_Atari ST GFA Basic Version 3 Interpreter_ manual (translated/printed in the UK) uses _brackets_ for ( ).
_C++ in Plain English_ uses _parentheses_ for ( ), _brackets_ for [ ], and _braces_ for { }.
_MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers_ uses _parentheses_ for ( ) and _square brackets_ for [ ] (in the index _brackets_ refers to the _square brackets_ entry).
@@alexhajnal107: Oh, and "less/greater than" < > are also called angle brackets; from the Grammar Monster and Byju's, along with those others being in that category: the _four_ shapes of brackets. So obviously even though there is some inconsistency, there's also enough agreement and similarity that it's safe to say that's the category of brackets does exist and that these are the 4 shapes of them. (Yeah, I meant to include < > before; I wonder why I forgot to.)
@@HelloKittyFanMan I took a look at the references I mentioned. < and > are only named in _C++,_ _HP85,_ and _Extended Color Basic._ In all three they're referred to as _less than_ and _greater than._ Personally, I don't recall having heard them referred to as _angle brackets_ until after the advent of SGML's progeny, namely HTML and XML. (To be pedantic, _angle brackets_ are properly 〈 〉.)
Just a note: The reason that in somplaces its called Tandy is because in (at least) the UK there was (still?) a guy that ran "Radio Shack" stores. He didn't want to sell/trade/whatever his trademark. I believe (it was told to me by a UK guy) that he got paid if they imported a "Radio Shack" item.
Maybe done during the transition from 8" to 5.25" disks? 8 / 2.54 yields 3.1496, which seems too close to 3.17 to be coincidence. But with 'Radio Shack' rounding, (truncation) that comes to 3.14. So, your explanation is closer.
I found a hilarious mislabeling at a convenience store where they sold fried chicken gizzards and livers at their hot bar. They were sold in a paper box labeled, "Better Than the Best". Someone actually got paid to come up with that package labeling. Better than the best, huh?
yeah, i tried that too, thinking someone just did cut and paste from 8 inch disks for the metric info.
3:37 disque magnétique (magnetic disk) is the correct name for a floppy disk in French.
G'day Robin! Love y'work, as always. We too collect photographic evidence of such errors (2:12), which will eventually be part of a show we have in the works, but, surely the trespassing sign at 2:19 is correct, wouldn't you think? (i.e. 'NO TRESPASSING AT NIGHT')
I think the trespassing sign is oxymoronic because if trespassing is allowed, then it ceases to be trespassing; permission is part of the definition of the word. Kind of like a sign that says "no stealing without permission from the owner".
@@8_Bit Ah! - So you think it should say 'NO UNAUTHORISED ENTRY BETWEEN...'(?).
Maybe those words wouldn't fit.
@@Um...Yep. Yes, that would be much better :)
In the U.S. Bottled water, soda and hard liquor is sold by metric units, but beer, milk, gasoline and are in imperial. Cans of soda are in 12 ounces. Most food and liquid has both imperial and metric on the package.
I've noticed 2 litre soda bottles on trips to the USA and thought that was strange!
Here in Europe / European Union there was a law suit: Sizes of TV sets had to be measured in cm instead of inch. In case of TV sets it made sense as inch (German: Zoll) is not very common, the rest of the Imperial system even less. It resulted in Microsoft Windows 95 packages on 8.89 cm diskettes or CD-ROM, and monitor manufacturers (then still CRTs) selling their products in inch and cm. Meanwhile it is over, we can buy our displays in inch again. Hard disk form factors are 3½" and 2.5", but slowly disappearing.
Over here in Australia we went metric before I was born and got rid of the old funny money similar to England. But they still give TV/Smarphone screens in Inches and sometime even newborn baby weight in pounds. We spell Colour the same as well and do the Aluminium with the I in it.
I think I've seen pizza sizes given in inches in Australia too? And occasional Fahrenheit references like the Midnight Oil lyrics "temperature in the shade had reached 110 again"
@@8_Bit Yes that is true about the pizza slices,, but one thing is funny old money works best for songs like the Proclaimer's Walk 500 Miles. In metric it would be Walk 804.672 Km. One thing for sure its not hot right now.
I was delighted to learn that Canadian gallons were Imperial gallons.
Thanks, Ken!
So, the takeaway is, you can fail primary school maths and still get a job in packaging design?
I had a box of those back in the day! I didn't notice it till years later that the conversion was totally wrong till I got another box alongside them where the conversion was right. There is a slim chance they're still in my parents computer desk. If they are, when I visit them you'll hear from me.
I could never figure out where 3.17 came from. Your theory is probably it.
Noah Webster of dictionary fame is the reason behind our weird spelling. He wasn’t even really a lexicographer. He was a politician with a bizarre idea that America needed to have its own language. His dictionary caught on in the early 1900s once the modern K-12 school system became common. There are even parts of our constitution that spell things the “proper” way
He also accidentally caused the zee pronunciation of Z. It was a fad in New England (and ironically, parts of Canada) in the 1800s but not really anywhere else until the 1880s thanks to phonograph records of the alphabet song.
Moi ce qui m'inquiète le plus c'est qu'au Canada, les disquettes n'ont qu'un seul coté. Par ici, toutes ces disquettes sont de forme carrée et ont donc quatre cotés.
« What worries me the most is that in Canada, floppy disks have one side only. Around here, all these floppy disks are square in shape and therefore have four sides. »
Hehe, "3- or 5-pound baygs."
LOL, just kidding, Robin!
I'm from the French side of Canada, and yeah the French labels are pretty much obligatory if you want to sell your wares in the province of Québec. Sometimes we get some hilarious translations that makes absolutely no sense (particularly the one at 2:31, "rasoirs lame" which is very incorrect and should be "lames de rasoir"), but I'm impressed the diskettes have very accurate translations - did they consult with the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF)? The box at 5:42, although having the correct metric measurement, has a typo, though: the accent on the "á" should be on the other way around like this: à, which the blue box with the obviously incorrect metric conversion has, ironically enough, correct :)
In UK everything is mixed up as well. Fuel is sold in liters but fuel consumption is always in MPG (miles per gallon).
Beer and milk are sold per pint but all other drinks are in liters.
Timber? Imagine that 2" by 4" timber joist actually measures 47/100mm
Pipes (tubes) are mostly in mm but thread diameters on those pipes are mostly in inches
...you may be asking yourself "the self...", subtle but meaningful.
As a fellow Canuck, yes we kind of live in both systems, metric and Imperial. That will never change unless the U.S. goes metric. Pigs may fly by that time.
I had boxes of them that I donated to good will when I moved from washington state.. I only kept a new box of 3m single sided single density 3.5" disks.. Never seen a box of them and I couldn't pass it up.
8:02 in Canada, screens have their size measured from Under the bezel, resulting in an actual (visible) size that's about a half or three quarters of an inch less.
What a COCO CHEATER!!!
Actually it was kinda cute…
But the font was all wrong!!!
Appreciate the nod to us Die-Hard CoCo Users.
Also: Today we learned how they teach fractions in Texas.
That’s funny, in Australia we use metric but I never saw it used for floppy disks. In the past, I have seen television screens measured in cm but now we mostly use inches for displays.
I noticed that Australia uses inches for screens now. Maybe for pizza too? I was looking a couple years ago and found a few examples.
For sure had a bunch of those Radio Shack floppies. No idea where they've gone to these days, mind you.
One thing I forgot to say didn't they almost lose a new airliner because of a metric/imperial mix up and the tanks we not filled properly and they had to glide to an unused airport. I think it was Gimli? .
yes, the so called "Gimli Glider". Because of wrong unit conversion, they ended up starting with x lb of fuel, instead of x kg of fuel ... which meant that after about h half the travel distance, their engines suddenly stopped because they run out of fuel.
Reminds me of the time I saw some new-to-Canada fuel additive at Canadian Tire claiming to "increase kilometerage".
If one doesn't want to say "mileage" the word "range" does exist!
So I didn't get it the first time you said it -- when talking about multiplying 5 by 1/4 --- i.e. as to why they'd do that. But when you talked about the dash between 5 and 1/4, then it made sense. They basically interpreted 5 1/4 to mean five 1/4 which is 1.25 and then converted that to get 3.17.
Weird that they put the hyphen in 5-14" where it isn't needed, but not in "Single sided" where there should be one.
And I thought the mixture of metric and imperial here in the UK was crazy. Still, at least you spell "colour" properly.
I'm still confounded by an oil pressure sensor I have that is on an... American built, Japanese based car, that uses some obscure British pipe fitting thread. The whole car is metric otherwise. I do not understand HOW that happened, when at the time the car was built they'd already done the switch to get rid of the "standard" measurement and bolts.
Screen diagonal size was funny anyway. Most of the time you got a tube size rather than viewable size. Suddenly 15” LCD was the same size as 17” CRT. Here in Poland we used to measure TV in inches (and we still do) but for some years now we also have it in centimeters
This is thanks to EU. But in case of Germany it was quite useful in the 1990ies as TV sets suddenly were measured in inch. Computer displays were and are measured in inch, with a short time measured in cm, too. Some vendors still add the cm to the displays.
Noah Webster's spelling book (before his dictionary) was only behind the Bible in sales, and is largely responsible for the spelling we use in the U.S.