Well, they didn't actually measure the earth, they made an educated (?)
guess at the distance.

 Just reading Bill Bryson's 'A Short History of Nearly Everything'. Two
Frenchmen are sent to South America to measure the angle between two points
so that a calculation can be made of the Earth's diameter. They return home
nine and a half years later, having not talked to each other for eight years
because of a disagreement, to find a different survey crew has gone to
Scandinavia and already returned with the relevant information! At least
they tried.

On 1/30/06, John Rodgers <inua@charter.net> wrote:
>
> Did not all this metric business begin when someone measured the
> distance from  the equator to the north pole, and arbitrarily divided
> the distance into a certain number of parts, one of which was designated
> a meter. . And now isn't the basis for the system of metric measurement
> the length of the sine wave of the vibrational frequency of the Cesium
> atom??
>
> John Rodgers
> 88 GL Driver
>
> ]Kim Brennan wrote:
>
> > Okay, for all you folk that are so high on converting to the metric
> > system....what's the pressure in your tires? Uh, huh. What's that PSI
> > thing again?
> >
> > So, let's see would that be 2.75 bar in my tires...or 3.3 when fully
> > loaded. Bah, let's use hectopascals instead. 2750 or 3300 (roughly).
> >
> > Hmm, I wonder where I can get a tire gauge that measures in
> > hectopascals.
> >
> >
>

--
Jake
1984 Vanagon GL
1986 Westy Weekender "Dixie"
www.crescentbeachguitar.com