Dispute in Newspaper Article:


I wrote a piece in the local newspaper and got a response which I don't understand. He basically called me ignorant and had no idea what I was talking about. I am presenting this for opinions from others with more knowledge on the matter.


Caliber vs. Millimeters

I had to correct an article written by Craig Crosby in the Sunday, February 11, 2007 edition of the Morning Sentinel. In his great article about shooting teams, which is actually the first I’ve seen in the paper for quite some time Mr. Crosby makes a technical error in one of his statements. On page A7 there is a photo of a young man releasing an empty cartridge from his rifle. In his statement Mr. Crosby states: “Josh Knowles releases a 22 mm shell casing after firing his rifle….” Well it’s not a 22 mm casing. It’s a .22 caliber casing. American and English firearm bullet diameters have traditionally used the English measure of 100th or 1000th of an inch, thus the caliber. A .22 caliber translates to approximately .22/100th of an inch in diameter. If it was a 22 mm it would be .0866/1000th of an inch in diameter. One millimeter is about .03937 of an inch. European uses the metric system which uses millimeters in measuring bore size/bullet diameters. The .22 caliber is also the first practical self contained cartridge dating back to the 1850’s. It comes with anything from BB loads for pests to Match Grade for target shooting. I was quite surprised that Mr. Crosby did not get enough information from the shooters in the article to not make this mistake in the cartridge definition. It should be noted that a .22 is not a “toy” and will kill up to a mile!


Jean F. Pouliot
Oakland, Maine
jeanbarb@verizon.net

__________________________________________________ __________
Jean,

You are wrong, very wrong. 0.22 inches equals 22/100 inches or 220/1000 inches but not 0.22/100 inches.

0.22 inches is equal to 5.6 mm. 0.22/100 inches is equal to 0.0022 inches which is equal to 56 μm.

22 mm in obsolete units is 0.866 inches or 866/1000 inches, not 0.0866/1000 inches.

It is absolutely a sign of ignorance to display decimal numbers as being "per 100" or "per 1000" nor do you apply "th" after the 100 or 1000. You simply state them as numbers to the right of the decimal point. It is also correct that numbers less then one (1) be preceded by a zero. It is correct to show 0.22 (zero point two two) and never just .22. Even if you think it is common, it is still wrong, wrong, wrong. Ignorant, uneducated people use sloppy practices, not educated intelligent people.

Rule of thumb: Stick with SI. You will never go wrong.

Dan.

If I had been compelled to correct you I would have said:

"Dear Jean; I believe you inadvertently put a decimal in the number when you wrote .22/100. In fact, it should be 22/100ths of an inch."

If I had been compelled to correct you I would have said:

"Dear Jean; I believe you inadvertently put a decimal in the number when you wrote .22/100. In fact, it should be 22/100ths of an inch."


Have the urge...imparted by some well meaning grade-school teacher of my past...to reduce that to 11/50. Seems i was forever being corected for not reducing my fractions.

The respondent appears to be an obsessive-compulsive advocate for SI units (basic metric system units) which is fine until it makes him rude to no useful purpose. It is a tactic likely to put people off adopting SI units rather than embracing them. His advice to stick to SI units is what brought about the original article’s error in the first place. You were quite correct to catch that, a fact rude Dan conveniently ignores. The original article's mention of a 22 mm shell casing made the bullet out to be about 4 times wider than it really is, and made it out to be a hollow shell, which it also is not. I suspect the author looked at the length rather than the diameter of an empty .22 LR cartridge case, and thought that length was what the name referred to? Like most reporters, he sought no technical proof reading to correct erroneous assumptions, putting deadlines ahead of accuracy, as the news media mostly do.

The use of .22 instead of 0.22 is an artifact of the age of the cartridge industry. It is a naming convention, just as using one hundredth of an inch to mean one "caliber", rather than a whole bore diameter to mean one caliber (as artillery people do) is another old naming convention. It probably results from someone confusing “caliber” and “caliper”, as an old phrasing of the measurement would be, “.22 caliper”, a truncation of ".22 off the caliper", meaning the result from applying a Vernier caliper's outside jaws to take the measurement off the ends of an inside pincer caliper that spanned the bore. Indirect measurement is how this used to be done.

Old cartridge names are not normally modernized, and are typically appended as a second name when they are, because guns are stamped with the name of the cartridge they were made to use. Changing the naming convention would just encourage owners of guns made before the change to try to fire the wrong cartridges in them. That is potentially very dangerous and can cause guns to burst and kill their users or bystanders. Thus, it is indeed .22 Long Rifle, and not 0.22 Long Rifle; just a name, not an English unit.

It appears that the original writer identified this as a "22mm" (no decimal point). This being the case, it would translate to being 0.8661417323" in diameter (almost 7/8")!

I would have been temped to correct you on placing the decimal in front of the "22" on the fraction but I'll be totally honest and say I absolutely HATE fractions!!!! Then again I got this beef with the AM/PM thing too, there's only one "9:00" on my clock, the next time it comes around it's "21:00".

Speaking of teacher's, I had this one in HS who insisted I use fractions. Final exam, senior year he handed me a test with 200 questions, every single one of them in fractions. I handed it back to him with every single answer in a decimal. Got an "F" on it, took my case to one of my customers who just happened to be the school board director. They called a meeting, had the me and the teacher there and he went off on this rant about how I didn't follow the directions .... blaaa blaaa.... Director didn't even get a chance to say a word when one of the board members asked the teach, "are the answers correct?" Teach said, "I don't know I didn't check them." Board member said, " well, sounds to me like you ain't doing your job either. Check the answers and grade the paper accordingly or you'll be facing a review board."

I got an "A" the following day. LOL

Thank you gentlemen, and I mean the term sincerely for correcting me in a decent manner with no mention of my mental acumen. I know realize that I did use the decimal place in the wrong place. But really I was trying to show that the reporter didn't really check his facts as you stated. I realized that this "Dan" was correct when he e-mailed me but it was the "Wrong, wrong," and "ignorant" inference that turned me off.

Again gentlemen thank you for the correct information without the unneeded snide remarks,

LOL,

Jean Pouliot

I hope this means I can still use 7.62x51R in my rusty old .30-30 Winchester.

Well I was going to mention the decimal in the .22/100 thing, but others have beat me to it. I was also going to mention that 22mm is almost 25.4mm=2.54cm=1in, but again Markkw beat me to it by saying 22mm~7/8in.

I am an engineer so I actually do pay attention to fractions and decimals. I agree that Dan was out of line with his response to you though, that was uncalled for.

First rule of nit-picking - don't make any mistakes to let them jump on :)

Second rule: when you are correcting somebody, try to NOT make mistakes in the correction!

(Isn't that embarrassing? But we all do it - and the error ONLY shows up after it's in print, never when you proofread it. Sigh...)

xxxxxxxxxxxxx oops. Edited mistake. 200 Proof!;) :D

Mike G:

I didn't think I was nit picking but trying to correct an obvious error, and I certainly didn't call the writer ignorant as the "Dan" mentioned in my post.
I guess anytime one at least tries to correct an error they can be called a "nit picker". I suppose that we all make mistakes and we all could be called "nit pickers" if one wants to be technical.


Rocky:

I like your "second rule", it seems to be more philosophical and precise.


Jean P.

Jean, it's perfectly fine to offer a correction and if you make a typo in the process, well, poop happens. The correction was fine and well intended, the responce you got is typical of someone suffering from cranial rectumitis.

Reminds me of when I stopped at a McDonalds in NJ one day. Waiting in line for quite some time, I was annoyed with the slow service but even further annoyed at the couple in front of my with their little demon children (caused by lack of parenting). They finally got to the counter and the woman asked very loudly and with a very snotty attitude, "I want to know if these burgers are 100% pure beef because I'm not eating some kind of mixed junk!?!" Before the forever slow order-taker could answer, I spoke up just as loudly and snotty as the woman infront of me and said, "Hey lady, that little brown round thing under the tail is part of the cow, it's 100% pure beef too just like every thing else that comes as standard equipment on a cow, it's all 100% pure beef. Besides, you stopped at a place run by a clown not Emeril, wake up!"

I'll admit, that was a bit of overreaction but it made my point with the same snotty attitude she displayed. You didn't do that in your correct thus there was absolutely no excuse for Dan's attitude toward you.

My biggest terminology gripe is when people intermix designations and I have seen some gun rag "experts" do this as well. They will list something like "9.3mm caliber" Most times I ignore it but did send a correction to an on-line expert once. I said something like "RE: xyz ... it's either mm or caliber, it cannot be both." They guy responded much the same way as Dan did to you even though he was wrong. Some people just can't help their cranial rectumitis condition.

I said something like "RE: xyz ... it's either mm or caliber, it cannot be both.". . .

See Rocky's rule 2. It can. Caliber, as used by artillery, is the diameter of the bore without regard for what units of measure are used. It is why George Greenhill's formula, simplified for density 10.9 projectiles was:

150/bullet length in calibers.

The result was also in calibers. Thus a 2" gun with projectiles 5" long, would have a twist of 150/2.5 or 60 calibers. Since the shell is 2", 60 caliber twist is one turn in 120 inches. A 4" gun with projectiles 10" long, would also have a twist of 150/2.5, or 60 calibers. But this time, because the caliber is 4", the twist is one turn in 240 inches. It is only when you want to work in a standard unit of length rather than units of calibers, that you use the more common simplified 150D²/l.

In college I did a 3 month stint as a tour guide at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. We all had to memorize the script for the tour of the U505 (http://www.msichicago.org/exhibit/U505/index.html), the captured German WWII submarine. Part of the script was to mention its 50 caliber deck gun. I looked at the thing and thought, "that bore is a lot more than half an inch", and being a know-it-all college kid, tried to correct the guy teaching us the tour. He, in turn, and much to my astonishment at the time, informed me I was not the first to make this observation. However, the museum's experts had learned the designation was because the barrel was 50 times longer than its bore diameter, and was not a description of the diameter of the projectiles it fired. It is how artillery people used the term "caliber". Absolute diameter was a separate designation (e.g., a 4" gun, a 105 mm Howitzer, etc.,) or was even taken indirectly from the pounds weight of a solid bore-size ball, rather than linear diameter (Civil War era).

That last system was still in common use in the late 19th century, Greenhill's day, and is still what determines shotgun gauges (the number per pound of solid iron balls that gauge (fit) the bore). Greenhill might have spoken of, say, a 12 pound 30 caliber gun.

Quite astute and perfectly correct, Nick. Bravo.

(off topic - that's an amazing sub and museum.)

Thank unclenick,

FYI and side note,
Some USN battle ship gun naming convention (description) tell you the diameter in inches and barrel length.
Example:
5inch 38 Is a 5 inch bore with a barrel length of 5 time 38 (or 190 inches barrel length)

If I remember right there was also a 5 x 50? (250 inch barrel). I have always wondered if they used the same case and powder charge in both rounds?
Good day,
James

I was speaking in reference to small arms only. I have yet to find a single designation of any small arm listed in "caliber" as it is used in reference to Naval or artillery guns. If you search the complete designations of nav/art guns, you will note that all of them are listed with a combined designation

IE:

{12" - 45 caliber} giving you the nominal bore diameter and the barrel length in calibers.

{8 pound - 30 caliber} giving the projectile weight and barrel length (most common with euro artillery designation through WWI after which they resorted to using bore diameter & length as did most others because of the various munitions available for use that did not correspond to a given weight)

Anyway, point is that even small arms were never designated solely by "caliber", they also carry a suffix to identify the particular arm itself at minimum. Most carry a multitude of designations to identify the exact arm however most of these were never used in the field and never made it to being well documented outside of the DoD contract office.

IE:

{.50 caliber / M2}
{.30 caliber / M1}
{.30 caliber / M1919 / Mod 4 / Rev 2}
{.30 caliber / M1917 / Mk 5 / Mod 3}


If you look at WWII, the sub-designations of arms like the .30 caliber machine gun was absolutely necessary. I don't know all the particular designations but not all of them were chambered in .30-06, some where also chambered in .303 British yet maintained the main designation of ".30 caliber", the actual identification came from the suffix's. I count 9 veriations of the ".30 caliber machine gun" right off the top of my head, all of them chambered in .30-'06 yet each of them unique unto themselves. To simply identify them solely as ".30 caliber" is not correct. The common terms of ".30 caliber light" and ".30 caliber heavy" were only applied in the field and were never considered a proper designation however many of these were adopted by museums and are still incorrectly identified because no one bothered to look up the actual complete designation of the particular item.

The interesting point of the designations is when you find DoD specifications listing the bore and groove diameters in millimeters yet everything else including the chamber and barrel length is listed in inches. Ranging distance changed is now measured in "meters" yet the shells are still identified in "pounds".

Okay, long as I'm on my rant .... we still have alleged "experts" who identify the 7.62x54R as "7.62x54 Russian" when the "R" suffix does not identify it as "Russian" but rather as "Rimmed" just the same as the 8x57JRS where the "R" also identifies it as "Rimmed" just like all the other Rimmed rounds carrying the "R" suffix. The only round carrying the "R" suffix identifying it as "Russian" is the ".44 Russian"

All of which leads up the string of yahoos who used to come into the store and say, "Gimme some seven emm-emm bullets."

Sometimes, I'd do exactly that - hand them a box of bullets. They'd get mad and call ME an idiot!

Good one Rocky, I could enjoy shopping at your store! LOL

I don't like the mixed unit designations, either, but I suppose it is inevitable for NATO compatibility to be doing at least some of it. On the other hand, our military certainly had 20 mm and 37 mm rounds long before NATO was created. I don't know what the history of the adoption of those or the other metric diameter cannon and mortar round designations is?

Personally, I'd like to see that 22mm rifle! It's gotta make the Barrett & other .50 cal. rifles look small! Wouldn't wanna be sitting at the bench next to it on the range, tho'.

Also, I prefer our method of calling the caliber by bullet diameter. Much easier when trying to make measurements in reloading. The metric system is nice, but they measure the bore diameter, so actual bullets don't match what their name says…

,

Sure they do, if you buy them in Europe. Check out the Lapua listings online. Millimeters come first, there. Only their bullets for .50 BMG carry the English designation as primary, and that's because there are no European rounds for it.

Besides, we're the ones who call .429" "44 caliber". A lot of the older rounds appear to have been named by their case or chamber diameter, and not the bore, groove, or bullet diameter. That's how the .36 became a .38, and how a .309 can be a .32 ACP while a larger .312 can be a .303 British. All the .308 caliber .30's are named for the true reamed bore diameter before rifling is put in. Inexact names may have been created to prevent mischambering, or to sound bigger for marketing hype. The bottom line is they are really names first and only approximately measurements in most cases. And even when a name accurately matches a measurement, you still need to slug your bore to know exactly what is going on?

There is a .75 caliber muzzle loader. That's 19 mm. Pretty close to what you want. Can't say it will outperform the .50 BMG, though. ;)

Just to muddy the waters even more my 3 band Enfield .58 Caliber musket I used for Civil War re-inactment would be a 24 guage shotgun round!

Technically Jean, that's a "smoothbore rifle" if you've got it loaded with a PRB. If you load it with shot, then it becomes a "fowler". If you load it with blanks it becomes a "noise maker". LOL

I can understand the silliness. We 'Murcans have the .218, .219, .220, .221, .222, .223, .224 and .225 cartridges - ALL of which shoot .224" bullets. Then, we have a .22 Savage, which shoots bullets .228" in diameter.

Kinda makes ya wanna throw up your hands and become French!

Technically Jean, that's a "smoothbore rifle" if you've got it loaded with a PRB. If you load it with shot, then it becomes a "Fowler". If you load it with blanks it becomes a "noise maker". LOL

I don't quite understand as my musket was rifled. We did some live shoots with Minnie balls. I was called the "pumpkin killer", much like Gunney with his watermelon, heh, heh.
I loaded my own blanks with 65 grains of black powder. I never used shot.
What is a PRB?

I can understand the silliness. We 'Murcans have the .218, .219, .220, .221, .222, .223, .224 and .225 cartridges - ALL of which shoot .224" bullets. Then, we have a .22 Savage, which shoots bullets .228" in diameter.

Kinda makes ya wanna throw up your hands and become French!

Don't talk about my French relatives; they can make wine, make love, make cheese, but they certainly can't make firearms or ammunition. I guess they did have some pretty good tanks during the start of WW2 but being sold out by their own Govt. they never had a chance to really use them.

I don't quite understand as my musket was rifled. We did some live shoots with Minnie balls. I was called the "pumpkin killer", much like Gunney with his watermelon, heh, heh.
I loaded my own blanks with 65 grains of black powder. I never used shot.
What is a PRB?


Ooops, my bad! Three band'ers were rifled weren't they??? :confused: I don't mess with muskets much, was thinking smoothbores.... oh well, you had the decimal point fraction, what goes around comes around! LOL :D Should have shut up when I had the chance! :rolleyes:

Here's a little ML cyber lingo:

"PRB" - Patched Round Ball
"ML" - Muzzle Loader
"MB" - Mini Ball
"PC" - in reference to traditional weapons is "Period Correct"
"oct-rnd" - Octagon to Round barrel
"WB" - Wedding Band
"S-oct" - Strait Octagon bbl
"T-oct" - Tapered Octagon bbl
"swpd" - Swamped bbl
"RR" - Ram Rod

Thank you gentlemen, and I mean the term sincerely for correcting me in a decent manner with no mention of my mental acumen. I know realize that I did use the decimal place in the wrong place. But really I was trying to show that the reporter didn't really check his facts as you stated. I realized that this "Dan" was correct when he e-mailed me but it was the "Wrong, wrong," and "ignorant" inference that turned me off.

Again gentlemen thank you for the correct information without the unneeded snide remarks,

LOL,

Jean Pouliot
Jean, if we were all correct 100% of the time just how boaring would this life be?

Forna:

If I was correct 100% of the time:

1. I would be addressed as Saint Jean Francois Pouliot of Oakland, Maine
2. I would so bored that I would turn into a couch potato
3. I would open my own Forum and be it's Wizard of Oz
4. I wouldn't have to go to church Sundays and pray on weekdays
5. I would build the ultimate infantry weapon for the US military
6. I would be the newest Justice of the Supreme Court and be the pivot vote.
7. I would be able to think of more than six answers

Forna:

If I was correct 100% of the time:

1. I would be addressed as Saint Jean Francois Pouliot of Oakland, Maine
2. I would so bored that I would turn into a couch potato
3. I would open my own Forum and be it's Wizard of Oz
4. I wouldn't have to go to church Sundays and pray on weekdays
5. I would build the ultimate infantry weapon for the US military
6. I would be the newest Justice of the Supreme Court and be the pivot vote.
7. I would be able to think of more than six answers

that's one of the reasons why I watch so much TV

I guess that makes me a couch turnip, heh, heh.

Great sub museum tour unclenick! One of my dad's best friends was a US Submariner, with two undersea escapes. He was one tough old bird.