I was intrigued by the Targus Stowaway keyboard mentioned in an article entitled "EE gifts for the holidays" in IEEE Spectrum (2000-12).
It measures 351 by 130 by 0.4 mm when open, but folds down to 91 by 130 by 0.8 mm.
So, I rushed to the Targus website <http://www.targus.com/> to get more information on the ultrathin-film foldable keyboard, and found the following Spec for size.
Closed - 3.6 x 5.1 x .8 in. -> 91 x 130 x 20 mm^3
Open - 13.8 x 5.1 x .4 in. -> 351 x 130 x 10 mm^3
Well, the ultrathin-film foldable keyboard turned out to be an illusion, or another case of conversion error from the English/Imperial system to the SI/metric system. Alas, NASA is not alone! Luckily, this particular mixup did not cost millions of dollars but just 10 minutes of my time looking it up, multiplied by the number of inquiring readers of the Spectrum magazine :-).
Star Trek: The Original Series (ST: TOS) set in the 23rd century still uses the English/Imperial system, but Star Trek: The Next Generation (ST: TNG) set in the 24th century uses only the SI/metric system. Therefore, it will take not another millennium but only 300 years before we switch to a completely SI/metric world. Good grief!
