~misfit~ wrote on 9/7/2017 12:55 AM:
Once upon a time on usenet rickman wrote:
Someone was talking about decimal time where the second is shortened
by about 15% allowing 100 secs/minute, 100 minutes/hr, 10 hr/day.

I think the utility of this is limited and it would cause a lot of
changes in society. We presently have a large number of convenient
time increments which would not be so convenient in the new system.

First, the hour would be 2.4 times longer leaving us with no
convenient unit about the same length of time as the hour. The
closest would be the quad-deci-hour which would be 0.96 old hours. The
deci-hour would be pretty convenient about 4% shorter than a
quarter hour. The old half hour would now be about a fifth of a new
hour, so we could call it a "fifth" which might become confused with
a non-metric liquor measure, a fifth of a gallon

So that's where that term comes from! I've heard it in American movies / TV
and read it in books but couldn't work out how a bottle that wasn't much
more than a pint (~600ml) got the name 'a fifth'. I forgot about the Merkin
gallon being less than a real gallon. In fact it's almost exactly 'a fifth'
short!

which has since become 750 ml in metric.

Nah that is what the rest of the world called a 26oz bottle before metric.
Of course in the US that would be closer to 25 fluid ounces. shakes head
US water must be heavier.

A pint's a pound the world around!

--

Rick C

Viewed the eclipse at Wintercrest Farms,
on the centerline of totality since 1998