Greek numbers and modern measurements.

From: David Miller (dmiller@worldy.com)
Date: Thu Feb 25 1999 - 17:39:08 EST


I expect that this is a rather obscure question, but am not sure where
else to take it...

A friend of mine recently suggested that, given Greek's use of primed
letters to symbolize numbers, our modern use of an apostrophe (') to
indicate the measurement of feet is probably derived in some way from
this Greek system.

I doubted that the connection could be made, but agreed to look into
it. Does anyone know where our shorthand for the measurement of feet
comes from?

Thank you.

David Miller
Scarborough, ON

---
B-Greek home page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/bgreek
You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu]
To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-329W@franklin.oit.unc.edu
To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu


This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:40:18 EDT