Talk:Lumen second

Should this not be "the talbot", since SI units named after people have a lower case letter? I know this isn't an SI unit as such, but it is based on one. Or does the capital letter reinforce its non-standard status? Hairy Dude 16:25, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

The usage seems to vary, and since it isn't an SI unit, one can't definitively say which is correct. I've changed it to lowercase for better consistency with the SI units, though.--Srleffler 01:48, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Lumerg or Lumberg or both?

I find lumberg listed in many places, including other language WPs, but so far could not track down the origin of this unit. It is said to be an older name for what later became the talbot in various sources (however without giving any specific dates). Given the similarity with lumerg (note the missing "b"), which could be tracked back to the meeting of the committee on colorimetry of the Optical Society of America in 1937, where it was defined as 10^-7 talbot, it could well be, that lumberg is just the result of a typo. It is also possible, that Loyd Ancile Jones' publication "Preliminary draft of a report on nomenclature and definitions" is the origin of the typo the other way around, and that what he spelled as lumerg should have been lumberg in the first place. After all, Lumberg is also a common surname (of whom?) and both spellings maintain the play on word on the unit erg. Then, both lumerg and lumberg could well be the same, and with the facts gone lost over time and both units no longer in active use, lum[b]erg might have started to appear just as an older name for talbot. As it stands now, we have to document both units and distinguish between them, however, I would appreciate any further info on this. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 11:16, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Are any of the sources that use "lumberg" reliable sources? If so, please add a citation to one of them. If you don't have a reliable source that uses "lumberg", I think we should remove it from the article until such a source can be found. My concern is that we might end up inadvertently helping to propagate false information.--Srleffler (talk) 03:22, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

All references to ‘lumberg’ that I've managed to find could either have been taken from Wikipedia or from Dictionary of Scientific Units. I think the most plausible scenario is that, influenced by the common occurrence of units named after people, a colleague of Jerrard or McNeill misheard ‘lumerg’ as ‘Lumberg’ and assumed it to be named after someone famous, even if he himself didn't know any such person. A reference to an actual professor Lumberg of optometry or someone like that seems unlikely, as I wasn't able to find anyone with right name and occupation in the right time frame. Which means that ideally we might want to remove ‘lumberg’ from Wikipedia altogether, but unfortunately the Dictionary of Scientific Units is considered to be a reliable source and I'm not sure how Wikipedia is supposed to deal with errors in reliable sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.61.180.106 (talk) 14:29, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

The 2012 edition of the Dictionary of Scientific Units explicitly defines lumerg as "[a]n earlier name [for the lumberg], suggested by the American Optical Society in 1937".[1] That's about as unambiguous as it gets. It's clearly not a typo.--Srleffler (talk) 18:14, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Please read my previous comment again. I never said the error was due to a typo. The 2012 edition was based on the older one, which was also compiled by Jerrard and McNeill. There seems to be no written source for lumberg that predates their dictionary, so they most probably didn't get it from a written source, but from a colleague who misheard some other colleague. The b is almost certainly an error: there are no attestations from the time and the b makes no sense. Lum from luminous and erg the unit do make sense, what's the b for? I think my explanation for what caused it is the most plausible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.61.180.106 (talk) 16:55, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Yep, but this is Wikipedia, where we base our articles on reliable sources, not on what is most plausible. Also, we document what is, not what should be. It doesn't matter whether "lumberg" makes sense. We have a reliable source that asserts explicitly that the term was in use, and that it replaced the older term "lumerg". Absent contrary sources, that is what the Wikipedia article needs to say. I have a feeling we haven't really dug hard enough, though. There must be sources out there, at least with examples of one or the other of these units actually being used. --Srleffler (talk) 01:39, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Move

I propose that we move this article to lumen second, and edit it to focus on the SI unit, with the Talbot as an alternate name. This will be analogous to candela per square metre, which also covers nits.--Srleffler (talk) 16:36, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

That's fine with me, I was considering this as well given that talbot, lumberg, lumerg are all deprecated units, and "lumen second" is a common term (at least in Germany we speak of Lumensekunde, not Talbot etc.). Nevertheless, we should not abandon the links to the deprecated units. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 17:19, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Done. I agree in general that good redirects and links to deprecated units are a good thing. I removed the links to talbot and nit in the light units template, because the terms are explicitly identified there as synonyms for the SI terms, and they would not be listed otherwise since the template is for SI units.--Srleffler (talk) 03:50, 18 August 2011 (UTC)