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From: rwt@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Rainer Thonnes)
Subject: Re: New IEC proposal: 1 kibibyte = 1024 bytes
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Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 16:04:26 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.std.internat:6573 sci.lang:68164

In article <32DBC1D4.23D8@cs.purdue.edu>,
Markus Kuhn <kuhn@cs.purdue.edu> writes:
> Rainer Thonnes wrote:
> > quoting ?kuhn?:
> > > The siemens is now the standard, and has the symbol S.
> > 
> > That's a strong statement and I'm not sure it's true.
> 
> It is. You won't find any "mho" in any ANSI, IEEE, NIST, ISO, IEC,
> etc. standard or in any modern textbook

I was contrasting it with the ohm, not the mho.  The unintentional
implication in the "strong statement" with which I was taking
issue is that the siemens is "more" standard than the ohm, i.e.
that conductance is now seen as a slightly more fundamental quantity
than resistance.  It is that notion which I was trying to dispel.

> There are exactly seven fundamental "base units" in SI:
> 
>   meter, kilogram, second, ampere, kelvin, mole, candela
> 
> You can express all other quantities using these base units. For
> practical convenience, a number of "derived units with special names"
> has been defined in SI, and both
> 
>   1 ohm     = 1 volt/ampere
>   1 siemens = 1 ampere/volt
> 
> are such derived units. None of them is more fundamental
> than the other!

The trouble is that every few months someone posts pointers to their own
favourite web site, and they all say slightly different things.  The
particular one I've been browsing recently defines them as I said, viz:

   1 ohm     = 1 volt/ampere
   1 siemens = 1 1/ohm

which carries a distinct suggestion of viewing the siemens a third-class
unit whilst the ohm travels second-class (or maybe that should be 4th/3rd
class or more, respectively, since the volt is itself non-fundamental).
