At 05:49 PM 4/5/2009, David Beierl wrote...
>>The coulomb, going back to its first definition by the 1st IEC in
>>1881, has always been a derived unit.
>
>Quoting Wikipedia...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulomb

Fixed. Historical documentation from inter/national standards
organizations trump an incorrect textbook any day (read the article
discussion if you're really interested, and want links to truly
authoritative documentation). I'm surprised that you would think
wikipedia is in any way authoritative.

Of course, this _is_ the Vanagon list, and no one here but you would
even think of using coulombs for measuring Vanagon-y things. Battery
capacities are measured in amp-hours, and multimeters measure
volts-ohms-amperes. I've yet to see one which will display coulombs.