Calum,
When you talk in your text about gallons I assume you mean imperial gallons?
A lot of readers however, not only Americans, may automatically assume US gallons.
Moreover the text is about a German engine, surely they did not use gallons but liters, so now I wonder: what did the original German document state?
It becomes even more confusing when looking at the quote from Ellor of Rolls Royce talking to American designers and stating "........ water is circulated by a centrifugal pump at 250 gallons per minute .....". Ellor may have meant imperial, but the Americans may have assumed US gallons. Or maybe Ellor meant US gallons as he knew he was talking to Americans, while the Americans assumed imperial gallons, as they knew they were listening to an Englishman.
It is also strange that Ellor uses in the same quote a mix of imperial units and metric units, as he states temperatures in oC.
The numbers are from a British study OF said German engine and hence is in gallons and is from a British paper, which anyone reading it would know which implies natually its not US gallons -
however you wont know that from looking at a two page preview. So I`d urge you to buy the book and read it in full for clarity.
The quotes often contain strange combinations of units, because (as here) you have an American writing a report for Americans, using information given to him by a British engineer vising America.
Thats one of the issues with direct quotes, sometimes people write in an unexpected style, and so as a writer you either have to fill the entire book with clarifications after each quote, or
not use quotes, or just try to make sure there is enough context in each case for the reader to grasp whats happening. I`ve chosen #3. Thats not Ellor speaking, its what an American engineer
recorded of his meeting. One may sometimes need to look up one of the extremely numerous end-notes to clarify things like that here and there.
If lots of people find it spoils the book, we`ll add in exact clarifications in future editions, however I feel with the context you`ll get from reading the actual book, in the vast majority of cases it will be
pretty clear. Its a narrative, so doesnt lend itself to "dipping into", as you wont know where what your reading relates to.
Very significant efforts have been made to accomodate US readers, such as changing the date for every single date (outside quotes) to "Aug 28" format, instead of 28/08 ... etc, so a
great deal of work has been put in to minimise cross-cultural confusion.
Feedback on any text-errors and general suggestions for improvement is most gratefully recieved, but I would very strongly suggest refraining from doing so until you have the actual book in-hand,
for the reasons given above.
