In this thread about “stone” and other unusual units of measure, the phrase “furlongs per fortnight” popped up. It turns out that this phrase is widely used (jokingly) in the physics community, but Google didn’t lead to any origins.
I think I read it in Mad magazine in the 1960s, but can’t be sure. So I’m calling on the Doper community to track the origin of this marvelous phrase. (Does anyone have the complete Mad on CD? Can you do a word search?)
I have minutes of an MIT SF Society meeting from 1968 or so that mentions the utility of giving the speed of light in furlong per fortnight - and it didn’t sound as if it was original at that point. I read MAD in the early '60s, but don’t remember the reference.
I prefer farads per fortnight myself.
But…a farad is capacitance, not distance…does not compute…
I first encountered the term years ago in a list of “Murphy’s Laws” as applied to electronics. IIRC, the relevant rule went something like, “All specifications will be given using the least useful measurements. Velocity, for example, will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight.”
Another that stuck in my mind was, “A $250.00 semiconductor protected by a fifty-cent fuse will protect the fuse by blowing first.”
No answer for the OP, but c = 1.8026175 × 10[sup]12[/sup] furlongs per fortnight. And a farad per fortnight apparently computes quite well. :dubious:
And why not? A farad is a coulomb per volt; a coulomb is an amp.second. So divide an amp.second per volt by time, and you get amp per volt. Now one volt per amp is an ohm, (R=V/I), so one amp per volt is a reciprocal ohm, better known as a siemen. The rest is a conversion factor for seconds per fortnight.
fascinating. did you know women and siemen don’t mix?
Yes, we all know what you think.
I vote farad/fortnight least useful unit I’ve ever heard of.
We know what you think.
No, a siemens. Not a “siemen”. Siemens is singular as well as plural. It’s named after Ernst Werner von Siemens.
I thought it looked odd! Well, there’s a piece of new and no mistake. 
At Caltech, we used bushels per fortnight acre. So there!
I recall reading a piece many years ago which said it dates from the 1960s space age, when NASA was contracting with other non-US agencies for worldwide tracking coverage of its satellites.
Long story short, the non-US agency reported a bunch of data in metric/SI units & some NASA guy asked them to convert the data to US units next time. So sure enough, on the next orbit the velocity was reported in furlongs per fortnight.
I have no idea if this is apocryphal or true, and if true whether it was the original furlongs per fortnight or not. But it makes a good story.
Siemens, the company, have a large office in Staines, Middlesex.
No, really, I am not making this up.
They also have several sites in the US, I worked at one in Florida. That’s where I occasionally worked with Bernd Brandes, the German guy who volunteered to be cannibalized by Armin Meiwes.
It’s also right next to the American Media building that was the site of the 1st anthrax attack.
Lots of good memories… :eek:
I prefer using attoparsecs per microfortnight.
Did anyone else read the name as Ernst Wiener von Siemens ?
And I’m a EE, so I should know better…
The only thing I remember from MAD was the “Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures”, based on the standard thickness of MAD issue #26. I managed to find a recounting of the standard weights and measures here.
Well, that brought back memories. Anyone up for a game of Three-Cornered Pitney? Or 43-Man Squamish?
Well, if you are going to use three units, I’m sure we can get into all sorts of trouble. But at MIT we like elegance, not being a trade school.
OttoDaFe’s post jogged my memory about where I saw this. It was on a list in a Physics lab way back when. It was similar to this one.
“All constants are variables.” is especially true in computer programming. Hence the need for named constants.
(You know, that’s one strange sounding user name…)