A Conversor of Old Яussiaи Length Units

by צפרירים

The Context

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You are reading War and Peace, from the writer Liev Tolstoy.

It is easy to be overwhelmed by dozens of characters with tongue-twisting names, and you are also confronted with distances described in “versts”…

But what is a verst?

Why?

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“Liev Tolstoy 1897” by F. W. Taylor

Tsarist Russia used its own lenght units.
While not essential to enjoying older russian texts, it may be helpfull to know its equivalent in modern units.
Internet allows easily to get information on versts:
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verst
- de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werst

Calculation: Not Exaclty Easy

One can learn to calculate distances “on the fly”:

So you read that Pyotr Ilyich walked 2 ¼ versts – what is this in miles?

  length.in.miles <- 2.25 * 0.6629
  return(length.in.miles)

  [1] 1.491525

Now for Kilometers – if Ippolit Vasilyevich rode 5 2/3 versts…

  length.in.km <- 5 * 1.0668 + (2/3) * 1.0668
  return(length.in.km)

  [1] 6.0452

And so on…

Proposal

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Verst Converter is an app that converts lenght values from versts to contemporary units, like mils, kilometers and nautical miles.

Hosted at GitHub (link to app)
Runs in Shiny, a web application framework for R developed by RStudio

App Usability

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How to use the app:

open R;
load the package Shiny and run the app from GitHub with the commands:
```
library(shiny) 
GitHub("verst-converter", "tsaphririm")
```
chose the unity, give your input and press “Submit” (or “Enter”).