Matt Parker
speaker
278 appearances
8 recordings
1 series
first heard Oct 2010
last heard 8 Jul
Matt Parker’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Unbelievable.
I mean, the official, original definition of an inch is that it's three barley corns.
What do you expect from a measurement that was...
Matt?
Yes, I have come along very, very apologetic.
I was unnecessarily mean and critical of the imperial unit system.
And so what I thought I could do is to now praise the merits and kind of promote the imperial measurement system for all of its wonder.
Where would you start?
So I mentioned the barley corns in my video.
And what I didn't say is that if you get three of these barley corns, you get an inch.
If you then get 12 of those inches, you get a foot.
And if you get three of those feet, you get a yard, which is all very straightforward.
And this carries on nice and systematically because 1,760 yards gives you a mile.
You take an eighth of that mile, you get a furlong.
You divide the furlong in tenths, you get a Gunter's chain.
If you divide the Gunter's chain to 11ths, you get a fathom.
If you have 15 fathoms, you get a shackle, or alternatively, if you take 100 fathoms, you get a cable.
Now, each cable, if you have 10 of those, you get a nautical mile.
If you have 3 nautical miles, you get a league, or alternatively, you can take a nautical mile and split it into 6,080 feet.
which means that the film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea should be 40,533,333 feet under the sea.
Showing 61–80 of 278 · page 4 of 14
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