On Sunday Dec. 22, 2019 my local paper, The Tulsa World, re-published an Associated Press article titled, “U.S. giving boot to official foot”, by Seth Borenstein.
The article notes there are two different definitions of the foot. There’s international foot (IF) and the U.S. Survey foot (USSF). The difference is 0.0000006. The IF is shorter by 0.0000006 which translates to a difference of 1/8th of and inch more in a mile. The U.S. is officially ending use of the USSF in 2022.
In 1959 the U.S. mandated a change to the IF, but National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) did little to push it. NOAA announced in October this will end in two years. “We have chaos,” says Michael Dennis at NOAA’s National Geodetic Survey.” 40 states still use the USSF.
Intersting fact: This all started back in 1893 when the foot was fit into the metric system shoe. The foot was defined as “1,200 meters divided by 3,937” = 0.3048006 meters.
In 1933 the IF was defended as 0.3048 meters.
This bears some similarity to Y2K, no?