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Every second counts

I appreciate your recent edit to the Eiffel Tower article but I'm afraid you are wrong. There is an excellent reprint of Eiffel's book comtaining reproductions of many of the drawings; they are quite clearly worked out to within one second of arc.TheLongTone (talk) 12:30, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

... from 1 to 3600 to get a degree

Dear Sir, I deeply appreciated your kindness while pointing out my being wrong. That's why, before replying, I gave a look to your profile, where I learned that you are a Tutnum of the Encyclopedia. This fact advised me to read in full, and very carefully, the text of your user page, where I found (among others) two very interesting statements: "The number of clear errors I have found in sources that should be reliable are beyond enumeration" and "I am a technical draughtsman".

With these two statements in mind, let's go back to the Tour Eiffel article, and in particular to the sentence "The position of rivet holes was specified to within 1 mm and angles worked out to one second of arc", the 2nd half of which I removed with the comment "The deleted sentence implies an impossible precision: working angles to within one arc-second would correspond to deviations in positioning of less than 5 microns per meter length."

To that comment, dear Sir, you didn't reply that I was wrong because my calculation was incorrect (which isn't). To my factual objection you opposed a 'source that should be reliable': "There is an excellent reprint of Eiffel's book containing reproductions of many of the drawings; they are quite clearly worked out to within one second of arc".

Quite clearly, uh? Let's have a closer look, both in the construction field and in the drawing room.

1. The position of rivet holes was apparently specified to within 1 mm. That's very reasonable, because those rivets, joining elements several meters in length, were anywhere from 14 to 25 mm in diameter. So let's consider the first and the last hole in a 3 m element, and let's suppose that the first hole is drilled exactly where it should and the last hole is drilled 1 mm off, orthogonally. The implied angle deviation over the whole element length can be calculated as arctan (1/3000) = 0.0191° = 1.146 arc-minutes = 68.7 arc-seconds. This means that in the construction field an angular precision of one arc-second is unattainable: it would correspond to much less than the thickness of the paint.

2. Now let's suppose that one of Eiffel's draughtsmen is preparing a large drawing (something similar to the modern A0 format). He draws a straight line, exactly 1,000 mm long, from point A to point B. Then he draws a second straight line, exactly 1,000 mm long, from point A to point C, forming an angle of one arc-second with the first line. Point C will fall at a distance from point B equal to 1000 tan (1/3600)° = 0.00485 mm = less than 5 microns. Dear Sir, you are yourself a technical draughtsman: do you really believe that two lines whose end points are 5 microns apart could be perceived in Eiffel's time as distinct lines? and do you really believe that those two lines can be perceived as distinct lines today, even when plotted by a laser plotter?

3. In addition to the above, please consider that: (A) a human hair has typically a diameter of 50 to 100 microns; (B) the resolution of the human eye is approximately one arc-minute = 60 arc-seconds; (C) an arc-second is so vanishingly small that it corresponds to the angle subtended by a five pence coin at a distance of 2.5 miles.

Based upon the available evidence, the claim about working out drawings (or field operations) to within one arc-second is untenable by two orders of magnitude, no matter what any source may say. Nevertheless, even after reaching this conclusion, I have no intention of starting an edit war: therefore I will not attempt to remove again the undefendable "one arc-second" claim. At the same time, dear Sir, I do believe that leaving such a preposterous claim in place will not help the casual reader to grasp correctly the grandeur of Eiffel's endeavour, and will not contribute to the authoritativeness of Wikipedia.

My respects.

P.S. A few friendly thoughts on your user page from a fellow Wikignome.

- "monopedel": or rather "monopedal"?

- "wrestling match with the artice": an artice must be a fearsome beast, worse than the Jabberwock.

- "forground": any toastcrumbs under the "e" key?

- "R100's strucural": any toastcrumbs under the "t" key as well?

- "like the asassination": three "s"s are good, but four would be even better.

- "its easier", "its time to pull", "its an aircraft": I hope you don't loathe the apostrophe as much as some squeaky words.

- and IMHO "Oneof the major / autobiograpy / curiousities / documntation / a bit of footling / sheeets / Unfortunatly" could benefit from a closer scrutiny or from vacuuming the keyboard.

My proclivity for typos is both admitted and irrelevant. The fact remains that the reproductions of Eiffels book clearly show that angles are worked out to within one second of arc. I would point out that it is often necessary to use a calculated dimension as a basis for other calculations and that I was not questioning your calcs; whether or not the degree of precision was unnecessary does not remove the fact that this degree of precision was used. And I think that a large number of dimensioned drawings is an unimpugnable source. Oh, and re the typos; if they offend you, you are welcome to correct them. Cheers.TheLongTone (talk) 12:51, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

Oh, and in reply to para 2: one dimensions drawings (DO NOT SCALE OFF DRAWING< as the rubric says) because ot this. Aditionally, drawings grow and shrink according to the degree of atmospheric humidity.TheLongTone (talk) 13:34, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

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