GERMANY ENLARGES THE RIGHT ANGLE

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 18, 22 January 1938, Page 25

GERMANY ENLARGES THE RIGHT ANGLE

Two of the facts which one rerriemers from schoolday geometry are that there. are 90 degrees in a right angle and that the three angles of a triangle together make up 180 degrees, says -a writer in the "Christian. Science Monitor." .

These were- facts such as one never dreamed could be altered. But they will soon be altered in Germany. For Dr.- Wilhelm Frick, Reich Minister, of the Interior, has decreed that henceforth the right angle shall contain 100 degrees and the angles of a triangle 200 degrees. Such steps have been taken, it is declared, in order to apply the decimal system even more thoroughly than hitherto. Germany.has long followed the metric system first introduced by France. German weights are based upon it, the Centigrade or Celsius thermometer of 100 degrees, has replaced the Reaumur, and now the angle is to be changed so that the graduation into 360 degrees is to disappear.

All new surveys will be carried out with the new division of the circle into 400 degrees, with decimal subdivisions for the measurements of the angles. A degree will henceforth be the one-hun-

dre"dth part of: a right angle arid the degree will'be again .subdivided into decimal parts of dne-tenthy-.one-hun-dredth, etc. The hundredth part will in future, be known as ,a "minute" and the hundredth part of a minute will be a -"second.". The degree will be indicated by a small "g," the minute by a small "c," and the second by "cc." .Some simplification in the writing of the' terms is introduced, e.g., an angle of 51 degrees 43 minutes 21 seconds will be written not as 51g 43c 21cc, but as 51,4321g. All changes in the theodolites used for land surveying must. be effected by April 1, 1945. , ' That this new system is not/recognised internationally is not so strange, it is-explained, since the. metre measure has not yet been*introduced in navigation. The .sea mile is the sixtieth part of a degree—lßss metres— and a degree is the 360th part of the earth's circumference. -It is also realised that it will take a long time before changes will be introduced in the Anglo-Saxon, countries, considering the tenacity with which the old -.measures based upon yards, feet, and inches are maintained.