MOSFET Follies, Third Edition

[Steve Conner]

I wouldn't be surprised if the European Union passed a law requiring every physical unit to be named after a dead scientist.

[R.G.]

Working for the Siemens company I must insist that it is Siemens even in singular. Ok - might also be a typo. ;-)

"Typo" was kind of you.

Being a product of the USA public school system, I know all the letters - it's just arranging them in the right order and rrright nummber that is a problem.

[rocket]

If you don't mind me asking what do you do for them Rocket and how and why did all this come about or why the change from mho's to siemens ?

I am doing SW development for mobile communications.

Unfortunatly quality audio stuff for studios is no longer produced by siemens, anyway I started here only little more than 1 year ago.

Apparently the SI unit "siemens" was introduced in 1971.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_%28unit%29

[bob p]

I wouldn't be surprised if the European Union passed a law requiring every physical unit to be named after a dead scientist.

Steve, you should do standup comedy.

I think that its wasted effort to re-name a unit of measure that is already universally accepted (Mho), and to replace it with an eponym that honors a famous industrialist (Siemens). Typically, eponyms are reserved to honor people who made a signifcant scientific discovery, or discovered a principle to which their name becomes attached. I don't think its the case that Ernst Werner von Siemens discovered the Mho or was the first to describe it. It would seem that getting rid of the Mho and replacing it with Siemens is just the case of honoring one of the world's weatlhiest industrialists just because his company is one of the big players in world manufacturing and has enough clout to attach their corporate name to a unit of measure. Of course its easy to understand why Siemens would want to do it -- That's more prestigious than having a single letter ticker symbol on the NYSE.

The abbreviation for the unit, "S", does lead to some ambiguation when it comes to performing calculations. I'm not the first person who's mistaken the letter "S" as the number 5 when performing a calculation. But them I also find it ambiguous to have three homonyms that all sound the same: seamen, semen, and Siemens.

[rocket]

I wouldn't be surprised if the European Union passed a law requiring every physical unit to be named after a dead scientist.

There is no need for a law: All SI units regarding electromagnetism are already named after dead scientist: VOLT, AMPERE, OHM, MHO, (which is OHM backwards, and I can easily understand that this awkward construction has been replaced), TESLA, GAUSS, FARAD, HENRY

PS: Will you ever forgive Edward Heath for getting into to EU?