"We Live in Different Worlds" Topic

Brooding over translations across cultures, which we keep fumbling. The past is different. Other places are different.

Last week I was told that a certain Gaza tunnel was 165 feet below the surface. No. "Fifty meters" is no more "165 feet" than "100 yards" is "9,144 centimeters." A literal translation of a rough measurement lends an entirely false air of precision to the whole thing.

And we do this all the time as we consider historical events. We look at Waterloo and give times in hours and minutes, and distances in kilometers and tenths of a mile. Bonaparte, Wellington and Blucher didn't live in that world. They lived in a world of "mid-afternoon" or "early evening" and distances of "a few miles" or "half a day's march." (Yes, you'll find hours on some written orders: this is so you know the one marked 9 O'clock is more recent than the one marked 8 O'clock, not because someone synchronized all the watches to Paris Standard Time.)

I have seen historians, who of all people should know better, try to express the length of classical weapons in inches. They weren't. A javelin was two, maybe three cubits, and a spear was four or five. When we give times to fractions of an hour and distances to numbers we'd need tape measures to confirm, we're dragging those people out of the 4th Century BC and squeezing them into a 21st Century Bed of Procrustes. Let's try not to do that.

The rant is ended. Ignore me in peace.

Fascinating! I have no further comments at this point in time as I wish to mull this interesting point of view over for 7 and a half to 15 hours.

I don't think it's relevant what standard of measure one uses for such things. "About 5 feet" for "About 3 cubits" is fine, in part because almost no one today knows what a "cubit" is, and, let's face it, standardized precision measurements were not a thing in the past, either. So using feet or yards or meters is of little consequence as long as the reader or hearer thereby receives a general idea of the length of the object in question. (Even though I have a pretty good feel for metric lengths, I still prefer inches, feet and yards.)

But I will also agree that the idea of any real precision as we expect on a tabletop applied to historic (or even modern) weapons and military movements is absurd. No, a musket does NOT have an exact maximum range— the variance from weapon to weapon, amount of powder, size of ball and wadding, the wind, the temperature, any fowling, etc., etc., means that any given musket could vary in effectiveness from any other… and let's also admit that's true of modern weaponry as well. Oh, modern stuff is much more homogenous in performance, but all sorts of factors apply, and there is never a truly precise segmentation of ranges or effectiveness in any weapon… and that also extends back down to the most basic weapons of the past— spears, knives, rocks, arrows, swords… in the end it's all a big muddle, because too many other factors are involved.

So, yeah, trying to be overly precise with historical battles as to who was exactly where and exactly when, along with any other precision claim, is more than a bit silly.

I game with several ex-army types. As officers, they were trained to accurately estimate distances – another reason I prefer allowing pre-measurement so I can keep up.

An ex-policeman pal can very precisely tell you what speed a car is going by observation alone. My point here is that if you do not rely on time pieces or GPS you can train yourself to judge time & distance.

Whilst I would not disagree with Robert, I would hesitate to disallow the ability of people in the past to fairly accurately judge time & distance, simply because that WAS the world they lived in. To the centimetre or the minute-no. But allow our ancestors to gauge how long to sunset or if they could reach a goal within one day's travel.

A cubit is from the tip of your middle finger to the bottom of your elbow, everyone know s that :)

I agree in general, though I think Robert misrepresents Wellington's and Napoleon's view of time and distance. Look at the measurement breakdown by Nationality and region in Scharnhorst's Officers' Handbook. Such things were considered important. For a military man, the 'pace' was paramount in judging distance. As troops were trained to cover X ground in X minutes, that was the basis for judging time and distance. I think ochoin has the right of it here.

Things during the Napoleonic period were very provincial. A Spanish league was three miles, a British League six depending on who was measuring. Inches, feet and yards were different lengths and had different names.

The one I love is in Northern Italy. The day didn't start at 12AM, but at 6AM, so invading armies could often get thrown off by local 'days.' The reason that each town had bell towers ringing the time all day is that pocket watches lost about 15 minutes a day, and every town had a different time, usually set by sundial.

That is often why reports and narratives can have conflicting times…

There is also the fact that Continental nations had a variety of languages internally. Only 25% of Frenchmen could understand Parisian French and Napoleon's bulletins. Those in Lyon could not understand a local from the Marseille. A local in Piedmont would have no idea what a Neapolitan was saying. For several nations, like Italy, the 'National Language' was a creation of the mid-1800s.

Things were really different back then…

But I will also agree that the idea of any real precision as we expect on a tabletop applied to historic (or even modern) weapons and military movements is absurd. No, a musket does NOT have an exact maximum range— the variance from weapon to weapon, amount of powder, size of ball and wadding, the wind, the temperature, any fowling, etc., etc., means that any given musket could vary in effectiveness from any other… and let's also admit that's true of modern weaponry as well.

While that is true, military men worked to mitigate such 'imprecision.' There were 'effective' ranges in the Napoleonic wars, which were no more than agreed upon ranges where there was some expectation of expected effect whether muskets or cannon. They needed to know what they could depend on regarding weapon effects. For instance, the French saw 1200 yards as artillery's 'effective range' while it was 1000 yards for the Russians. Lots of reasons for that difference, but it was an attempt at greater weapon effectiveness… or expected 'precision' if you will.

I find that it is interesting that contemporary Napoleonic military men saw 200 to 250 paces as 'effective' range of muskets were gamers are thinking 100 yards.

Oh, I agree— the effective range is what counts, and is basically the point at which you hit enough enemy (or scare enough enemy) to make it worth the cost in powder and balls to fire a volley. It has almost nothing to do with what an individual man with an individual weapon could do, and it's not a case of precision so much as experiential estimates. So it's a knowledgeable guess more than anything else. It's wargamers who dicker over "you're out of range" arguments based on millimeters on the tabletop, even when the millimeter is the scale equivalent of a foot or even a yard. It's not like IRL an effective range of 100 yards means that the weapon is completely ineffective or even truly less effective at 101 yards, or even 110, or that it's somehow more effective at 99 yards or less. But sometimes that's how rules and gamers treat it.

On the other hand, there is clearly a general point where a weapon loses effectiveness or simply will not reach, just as there are points where a target is "inside the guns", where ballistic artillery can't create an arc to safely impact without risking impacting itself. There is a certain level of precision to both of these IRL, and that makes sense on a tabletop as well. But at this point I'm just talking out of my hat, not experience, so call that "uninformed speculation."

Good points, thank you all. And I would not want to underestimate a good trained officer's eye for time and distance. I could tell some stories about "eyeballing" even in the modern period.

What set me off were some discussions--naming no names, and possibly I misunderstood--about times and distances beyond what the general could see. We can sit here with nice scaled maps and astronomical charts, and say "it's 1515L, the distance is 10.7 miles and EENT is 1810L, the rate of march is 72 paces per minute with a 22" pace, so the troops can/cannot arrive at the objective in time." All very precise and mathematical, and maybe even right. But the ancient commander has neither map nor watch: he's in the mid-afternoon, about five miles, a good brisk pace and sunset is late this time of year world. We may know what's feasible: he can only take a good guess. His horse and musket counterpart is better off, but only somewhat: he still has no astronomical table, the watch is only so-so accurate and those maps are a long way from the Ordnance Survey. (I have myself owned a modern US map which showed a road which did not exist and never had--and it was still a better map than anyone had for the 100 Days.)

We may be right about time and distance, but it's unreasonable to expect men with very different tools to make the same calculations.

For shorter distances, a lot of my ire is directed at spurious precision. Isn't anyone in the news media or the History departments taught about significant digits?

And as for "effective range" the bane of all miniatures games is the casting with a firing range of 12" standing with perfect immunity 11" away from troops with a 10" firing range. We all know it doesn't work that way in real life, and anyone who finds a good simple solution should be Guest of Honor at the next Historicon.

There is quite clear evidence that standardisation of measures of both weight and small distances (equivalent to body parts) was achieved in a variety of civilisations/cultures long before Greece & Rome came along.

In England we had, up until relatively recently, weights and measures standardised in the reign of Edward I and probably in use long before that.

Don't assume that those without technology we take for granted found equally effective ways of doing what was necessary. People of my generation were taught how to calculate without any aids but a pencil and paper – this seems an incredible feat to some current youth. We didn't do it to be awkward or because it was traditional, we did it because there wasn't a better way.

Diffrent times zones in the UK were still arround, they only took with the advent of the railways when a universal time was needed to efficently run the railways. The greeks knew that noon varied between plavces thats how they worked out the earth was a sphere.
So the ancients if need be could be resonably precise.

Historians using current definitions of weights and measures is just common sence and so I believer your stamensts to be somewhat lacking in weight (no pun intended).

At times I have measured cost in terms of how many miniatures something would be worth (for example, the cost of book would equal a pack of Old Glory miniatures or a couple of Games Workshop figures). At the time this made more sense then measuring cost in terms of dollars or pounds.

Good ol' LSD, pounds, shillings, and pence! Those were them days.

There is also the fact that Continental nations had a variety of languages internally. Only 25% of Frenchmen could understand Parisian French and Napoleon's bulletins. Those in Lyon could not understand a local from the Marseille.

..??…
given that Lyon was the second major city of France and the french (parisian? what that…) was more learned in urban zones than rural such sentence is dubious, the same with Marseille so open to the outside

it is rather the opposite 25% of the Kingdom can't understand standard french c.1789,
the others had serveral levels and uses of the french

under Napoléon even in medium-size cities of the backward rural Central mountain massif the linguistic census of 1807 shows that the patois is disappearing, being denatured by standard french

Department of Ain, closest to Lyon/Dept of Rhône
the French language is the only one in use in this department. Apart from a few local expressions, it is generally spoken quite well; especially in recent years, it has become the subject of particular study in the different towns of the department, and mainly in the capital. We can say that there are few fathers of families enjoying some comfort, even among artisans, who do not want their children of both sexes to receive this type of instruction;
As for the inhabitants of the countryside of Bresse, they speak a dialect or patois which constantly varies in the different parts of the department, and often even from commune to commune.

Statistique générale de la France, publiée par ordre de Sa Majesté l'Empereur et Roi sur les mémoires adressés au Ministre de l'Intérieur, par MM. les Préfets. Département de l'Ain. M. Bossi, Préfet. Paris, Testu, 1808.

same southeastern France between Lyon and Marseille, even in an archi-rural mountainous backward area such as the Upper Alps it has been observed c.1811
the vulgar idiom in the Hautes-Alpes is a patois. This patois is the dominant language in this Department. The bourgeois themselves, in their private conversations, do not renounce it. the activity that the administration has placed in its relations with the countryside, curiosity, public news, the movement that the revolution has impressed on all classes, the need to know the laws and to conform to them; everything contributed to making the use of French more familiar to the inhabitants; and if there are still some who do not speak it, there are very few who do not understand it

When NASA Lost a Spacecraft Due to a Metric Math Mistake
link

Wolfhag

"When NASA Lost a Spacecraft Due to a Metric Math Mistake".

They seem to have a history of this, the Hubble telescope was out of focus for a period due to the same problem. As I recall it took a manned mission to correct it. Maybe if the USA could just recognise it isn't the centre of the world and use the metric system like everyone else, but I'm not holding ym breath.