Size does matter

I recently bought a 28-inch Grundig television set. Everything was fine, only it was not a 28-inch set.

So I called the Grundig representative here, PT Usaha Global Elektronika. The store sent me the ST 70-750/9 TOP, I said, and wrote on the receipt that it was a 28-inch Grundig television. Was I cheated?

Not at all. It is a 28-inch Grundig television, the wise technician assured me.

What a relief! But then why is it that the diagonal width of the TV screen is less than 27 inches?

"We never measured it that way, we just market it as a 28-inch Grundig television as directed by our superiors, ...actually it is 70 centimeters.

So the key to the puzzle was actually staring me in the face all the time, in the secret factory code. I thanked the kind technician, and put down the receiver. I am hopeless ignoramus, I cursed myself. I should have remembered that the Germans, like us Indonesians, use the metric system. We are much more advanced and international than the English or Americans, after all.

I whipped out my calculator. Seventy cm is 27.559 inches. Hey, why not call it a 27.5 inch television? Well, I pondered tolerantly, maybe the extra 0.059 justifies rounding it up. And of course, for marketing purposes it is easier, not to say grander, to call it a straightforward twenty-eight rather than a twenty-seven-point-five.

Next I put a metric ruler to the screen. But it was only 68 cm! Could it be that the German-made screen shrank in the humid tropical climate? That must be the case, as the great Mr. Sherlock Holmes would no doubt agree, since the only other explanation would be that the globally respected Grundig is lying, which surely can't be possible.

SAMSUDIN

Tangerang, West Java