Decimal points Sir: Two omissions and one surprising error in
Kingsley Amis's A to Z (`Sod the public', 19 October). Our coinage was not altered to decimal but to centesimal. Apart from some near-eastern countries which have millesimal currency and Iraq which has a vicesimal one, all countries seem to have decided on a unit divided into a hundred parts.
The metric system, with little to recom- mend it, being derived from an expert's confident but inaccurate measurement of the earth's circumference, originally was a decimal system; however, someone, some- where, decided that the unit of linear measurement should be the millimetre. The result: above four inches up to 393/8 inches we have to use three digits. Liquid measures and weights do not, though, use the millilitre and milligram as basic units. Why?
And the missed example: gradients are no longer 1 in 7 or 1 in 8, which conjures up some sort of picture, but 13 per cent. By the time you've worked that out you are in a tangled heap of metal at the bottom of the hill.
Charles Fyffe
52 Holmdale Road, London NW6
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