h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>> That should be a semicolon, not a comma in the middle of that sentence.

I have been programming in C# recently so my semicolon key is totally worn out

Sorry to butt in, but you are talking about one of my favourite subjects. The correct term for where cider is made is a 'cider mill'.
It goes through processes to mill, press, ferment and mature, before becoming what is one of life's real pleasures.

I understand that in the past, "I should" also meant "I intend to", but the meaning drifted over time.

You should check out the cider related terms on www.worldwidewords.org

Do two half thoughts count as one worthwhile posting?

First half: The description at www.worldwidewords.org is quite interesting, including many words for barrels of various sizes. Second only to the stationary 'vat' in size, the largest portable barrel (being equal to four hogsheads or about 208 gallons) was called a 'tun'. These huge barrels could be rolled on or off a ship without actually lifting them. This was handy in the days when man's machines were limited to inclined planes and levers and the odd rope or pulley.

These wooden barrels were the medieval equivalent of the modern 'container' (which sadly cannot be rolled and requires a huge hydraulic lifting apparatus) and supposedly were an advance upon the ancient amphora jars used by Mediterranean sailors for thousands of years. Amphora jars were once believed to contain only liquid cargoes or possibly spices but recent discoveries of intact examples demonstrate that they were the packing crates of ancient shipping and might contain anything, from smooth cloth to hairy pottery.

The word 'tun', or 'ton' or 'tonne' eventually gave us the 'large' measurement of 2000 imperial pounds or 2200 metric kilos/litres. It also gave us the measure (in tons) of a ship's displacement (how much water the hull of the ship displaced when laden to the waterline). But originally it was a measure of how many 'tun' barrels a ship's hold could handle inside (by the number of these standard shipping barrels), rather than how much water it displaced (by weight) outside.

And my other half a thought was "The Cider HOUSE Rules" by John Irving. A tranquilisingly pleasant writer who specialises in setting distasteful human behaviour and issues in wonderful landscapes. Made into a movie starring Spiderman and 'Alfie', it deals with many other things from early 20th century attitudes toward abortion to the skill of black farmhands with knives and says very little about the cider-making process in New England except that what they called Cider Houses there, were not 'pubs' but mills.


~jwf~

One further half thought on 'ton's which might be of interest to the geneology crowd.

It is usually assumed that family names ending in 'ton' such as Middleton refer to a 'town'. While this is probably still a generally valid rule, bear in mind that some surnames (such as Fulton or Singleton) might be associated with vats/vast quantities of liquids. Or shipping. Or ship building. Or barrel making.


~jwf~

Shiver me timbers, jwf!

You're trying to deprive us of 240 pounds. A proper ton is 2,240 lbs, or 20 cwt (hundredweight), or 80 quarters, or 160 stones, or 35840 oz (ounces).

You beat me to the (non-alcoholic) punch.

When is a barrel not a barrel?

http://homepages.shu.ac.uk/~acsdry/quizes/barrel.htm

Barrel Size Gallons
Firkin ------- 9
Kilderkin --- 18
Barrel ------ 36
Hogshead ---- 54
Butt ------- 108
Tun -------- 216

(I give up on that spacing.)

OK Mister Smarty-pants, how much does a tun weigh?

I know, I know it depends on a 'tun' of what.


I'm not sure I could even calculate what a tun of water would weigh. A tun holds 216 liquid gallons you say - mine said 208 but 4 hogsheads at 54 gallon each would be 216 so I'll concede that point.

First we'll have to convert that 216 gallons to litres. And of course that's imperial gallons not American (it's no wonder the American ton only weighs 2000 pounds or 32000 ounces). Your Imperial ton is closer to a metric 'tonne' (1000 kilos) because a kilo is 2.2 pounds.

The only way this will work if 1000 litres of water weighs 1000 kilos. Then we can assume that 216 gallons also weighs 1000 kilos and weighs 1000 kilos or 2.2 tons American.

Unless 216 gallons of something more drinkable weighs exactly 1 tun.


Potable? Hell no, I'm permanently fixed, nothing potable about me at all, at all.

jwf

"A pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter" 2 pints = 1 quart, 4 quarts = 1 gallon. Therefore a tun of water weighs 10 x 216 lbs, which is neither a long ton 2,240, nor a short ton 2000. Neither here nor there, then. Just one of our merry detours.
Btw jwf, what's all this litres nonsense? This is the BRITISH English thread, after all, harrumph.

Afterthought - what would the wood and iron of the barrel weigh? (Shades of Hoffnung, here)

I hadn't realised that a gallon of water weighed almost exactly 10lb, though I suppose I tend to work in metric most of the time these days, since it's much easier for length/volume/mass conversions and suchlike.

In the interests of accuracy, I'll point out that my dictionary of Conversion values gives different sizes for hogshead, butt and tun:

hogshead - 52.5 UK gallons
butt - 105 UK gallons
tun - 210 UK gallons

There are two different size of barrel in the UK: a normal barrel is 36 gallons, but a wine barrel is only 31.5 gallons.

In the US, things are more complicated: a liquid barrel is 31.5 US gallons. A dry barrel is 96/99 of this. An oil barrel is 42 US gallons.

Not only is a gallon almost exactly 10 pounds in weight, but for a long time the gallon was in fact defined as the volume occupied by an amount of water which weighs 10 pounds.

The 'official figure' of 10.025 pounds in a gallon is when the water is at 4 degrees. At a more normal temperature of 15.13 degrees, we find that a gallon is exactly 10 pounds.

as Gnomen says, the true exact weights etc depend on factors such as temperature. But here are some conversions that show why its not the easiest of subjects;

1 Litre = 1.761 pint imp = 2.113 pint US
1 pint imp = 0.568 litre = 20 fl.oz = 1.201 pint US
1 pint US = 0.473 litre = 16 fl.oz = 0.827 pint imp

1 litre = 1 kg = 2.204 lb (based on weight of pure water)
1 gallon imp = 10 lbs = 4.54 kg
1 gallon US = 8.35 lbs = 3.79 kg

1 tonne = 1000 kg = 2204 lb = 0.984 ton imp, 1.102 ton US (short ton)
1 ton imp = 2240 lb = 1016.3 kg =1.016 tonne = 1 long ton US = 1.12 Short ton US


1 barrel US = 0.7 barrel imp = 115.6 litre
1 barrel imp = 1.415 barrel US = 163.6

A good site to help with conversions is http://www.convert-me.com/en/

my head now hurts, so I'm off for a flaggon of scrumpy from the local cider mill.

A US gallon only weighs 8 pounds, so that a US pint weighs a pound.

Hed

ah, so not *everything* in the USA is bigger and better then

So, what is wrong with 'thankyou'?

I started writing a letter in Word and after the Dear Mr. bit, started the first line with 'Thankyou for your letter...' and word didn;t like it, wanted me to put 'Thank you'. Now, to me, thankyou is 1 word, saying thank you sounds affected and a bit pretentious really.

Has thankyou still not been generally accepted as OK?

p.s. as expected, once I had started writing a letter in word, this was the only time it didn't come up with the little helper saying 'you look like you are writing a letter'. typical

I've never imagined, let alone heard of "thank you" as one word before. Isn't that odd. Now that you've brought it up, I can see it happening on analogy with allright, nowhere, anybody, nevertheless, etc. But I've never heard of it before.

That's the first time I've ever seen "thankyou".

And "allright" isn't a single word, either!