Talk:Ton class

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Ton classes used at Olympic 1900 were in conformity with french classes of the last official rule in France, the Godinet Rule UYF 1892 fr:Jauge Godinet (references in the article in french). --Barbetorte (talk) 12:49, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Size of ton

To my studies I find, that in ship's rating ton for expressing tonnage has a size of 100 cubic feet (see register ton, too) since the late middle age (in England) for taxation. Later the size of such register ton was adjusted to 94 cubic feet (see Builders Old Measurement) and its formula was adjusted for yachts of that time by the Royal Thames Yacht Club in about 1855 with the same size of measurment ton. Before this, a yacht's performance and a merchant ship's taxes and fees were calculated by the same capacity-rule. A wooden cask with a capacity of one tun (about 240 gallons, in US-gal quite exactly 32 cubic feet, in Imperial gallons some fractional number but both is anachronical) occupies a box of about 100 cubic feet, somehow. By this and by the history of taxation of ships on tun-based tonnage the reference to tun is not so wrong. After introducing the first rating formulae including the sailarea in the 1880s (e.g. the Seawanhaka Rule) the feet-based tonnage-ratings became obsolet in Britisch and U.S. yachting.

Out of British influence some similar volume formulae were introduced, based on the metric system, resulting a rating in cubic meters, misleadingly expressed in metric tons, similar to the method of expressing a ship's displacement in units of weight or mass (actually, a ship's mass is expressed by the weight of the water it displaces afloat; mind how mass and weight were distinguished before Einstein claimed their equality, not just equivalence, in 1907). Just one of them became important as the Godinet-rule of the early 1890s was applied at the 1900 summer olympics. After introducing the Universal Rule in the the U.S.A. (1903) and the International Meter Rule in Europe (1907) all tonnage-rules came out of fashon years before WW1.

The success of especially the Meter Rule was not due its fairer ratings but due the accessories coming along with it: a transparent and well controlled system of measurement authorities, high level yachting events like olympic games, Cowes Week, Kieler Woche and probabily most important a set of simple, unique and internationally obligatory Racing Rules of Sailing.

Shouldn't the One Ton Cup be mentioned in the article? Just mentioned... Has there been more notable yachting events based on the ton class rules? America's Cup of 1851? Or one of its succeeding challenges?

What is about the reestablishing of the ton classes on the RORC-rule and IOR from 1965 to 1994?--46.114.128.164 (talk) 14:37, 5 August 2014 (UTC)