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At the risk of stirring another hornet's nest, as an electronics engineer
involved in radar design I am used to measuring time routinely to
resolutions of 0.00000001 second (though it's of no use unless that
measurement also has ACCURACY traceable to National Standards).
But I have been intrigued for some time, following some discussions in Fast
Facts on the numbers of significant figures quoted on speeds, as to the
accuracy of the surveyed mile and kilometre courses. Can anybody involved
shed any light on this? Somebody mentioned checking temperatures of
"tapes" - does this mean that someone goes out on the salt and tries to
pull a mile of measuring tape straight? And how orthogonal are the traps
to the axis of the measured mile?
And I'm not looking for an argument (was that a ten minute one or the full
half hour?) but I think we're all old enough to remember the discredit done
by the Bud Rocket "record" fiasco.....
Jon Hobden in Horley
(Donald Campbell's birthplace)
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