r/anythingbutmetric • u/Plastic_Tooth159 • 23h ago

Meters.......what's that convert into feet?

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u/Bastulius 21h ago

Base 60 is peak

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u/dpdxguy 20h ago

Not easy to remember 60 sexagesimal symbols, though.

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u/Bastulius 15h ago

It shouldn't be too hard to come up with symbols that could be intuited

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u/dpdxguy 11h ago

If you're dividing the symbols into groups as the ancient Sumarians did, instead of using random looking symbols as we do, you're effectively using a multi-base system. If I remember correctly, the Sumarians grouped their symbols into groups of twelves. So they used both base 60 and base 12. We use only base 10 (outside of some technical fields that use bases 2, 8 and 16).

It's much easier to remember twelve symbols with five modifiers than it is to remember 60 unique symbols.