[r-t] History

[John Camp]

At 11:30 on 07 June 2014, Mark Davies wrote:

> JEC writes,

>> Think of all those people defiling themselves by ringing impure peals
>> on 8 or more.  Disgusting, I call it.

> 5040 might not look like such a nice round number, and may look 
> certainly no better than 5000, but in fact it is your base-10 prejudices
> which lead you to conclude that.

But it wasn't me who started using the term "purity"!  And I haven't
mentioned "nice round numbers".

The fact is that 5000 (base-10) is the minimum number of changes which
qualifies for a peal on 8 or more.  And yes - I accept that this is
probably because of the proximity to 7!  But times change.
Mathematical "purity" (and of course I was being facetious in using
"pure" in other senses) does not seem to me to be a good reason for
having a different rule for 7 or fewer.

JEC