Newsgroups: sci.misc
From: hoey@pooh.tec.army.mil (Dan Hoey)
Date: 12 Dec 1994 18:24:28 GMT
Subject: Re: Conversion from inches to cm

Hovig Heghinian (ho...@tubman.cs.uiuc.edu) wrote:

: Isn't a meter defined as one part in 3e8 of the distance light travels
: in a second?  I understand that it used to be that the speed of light
: was approx 3e8 m/s, but that the meter was recently redefined so that
: the speed of light would be precisely 3e8.

No, that would have changed too many gauges.  They changed it so the
meter is 1/299,792,458 of a light-second.  I kid you not.

Dan Hoey
Hoey@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil