Hi everyone!
My dad was a machinist in his whole life before he retired and said that they taught in the school there’s English zoll. I keep telling him there’s no such thing. It’s called inch. Zoll is from Deutschland. 1 inch=25.4 mm, 1 zoll=26.34 mm. So who’s right? Please tell me I am, I really wanna win this argument 
.
Thanks.
Never heard of a ZOLL when I was doing my apprenticeship toolmaking in the UK, gnats cock, yeh heard that one a lot.
1 Like
Ok, as a German I should probably reply to this 
There were lots of different units called Zoll in Germany. Every state had its own unit. Nowadays if we use the unit Zoll it is the German translation of the Imperial inch, which is 25.399931mm, or in short 25.4mm
The Imperial inch has changed slightly over the years, but this is what it has been since the war basically.
The US inch is different again by the way. It is 25.400051mm. Too tiny a difference to notice in reality.
The old German Zoll varied significantly, I think roughly between 20 to 40mm.
The German “Meile” did vary a lot as well. So if you find an old milestone you have to work out how old it is, who ruled in the area at the time, and then look up how many km that mile equates to. Luckily you don’t find old milestone that often 
Cheers
Harald
3 Likes
Thanks guys for the reply. In my home country (HU), if it’s not in mm then they use the zoll. TV screens, car wheels, mostly these. So the book my dad’s got says English zoll, they mean the English version of the zoll, and that’s the inch.
I often referred to a “fat eighth” or a c-hair when I was boatbuilding …
When I was serving my apprenticeship it was a ‘Midge’s Dick’ 