Beware the Unit of Measure

While looking for something else, I stumbled across this Amazon offer (clicky for more dots):

Hammermill Truckload Paper
Hammermill Truckload Paper

Yeah, a trailer load a’ paper. Word.

Long ago, in a universe far away, my buddy Mark One mis-read a unit of measure and ended up with a trailer load a’ Tektronix Thermal Paper. It carried a silver-based emulsion requiring constant refrigeration, so he stashed about a pallet of paper canisters under every raised floor on the IBM Poughkeepsie campus. Even though the raised floor acreage has dropped dramatically, some of it may be there to this very day.

2 thoughts on “Beware the Unit of Measure

  1. A coworker at HP once worked for Varian. He needed a little bit of fumed silica, maybe a liter (expose silane to oxygen–it’s kind of pretty) and ordered something like 20 pounds. 15 barrels were delivered. Oops.

    Quantities from long ago memories…

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