Putting Wales on the worldwide web

Mar 28 2008 by David Williamson, Western Mail

The world’s three great units of measurement are the mile, the kilometre, and the size of Wales, we revealed in 2003.

When stuck how to describe an object of roughly 20,754 sq km, writers and broadcasters ask their audiences to imagine Wales filling the area.

A website had been created by a geophysicist called Simon Kelk which took away the guesswork in deciding whether a game reserve, glacier, asteroid or island is the size of our country.

Mr Kelk’s “Wales-o-meter” “nation-o-metre” is located at his website, www.simonkelk.co.uk.

Within a second of entering a set of dimensions into the on-screen menu, the user is informed of how the size of this object compares with that of Wales and one other country.

For example, Washington DC is 111 sq km; this is shown to be 0.005 times the size of Wales but 4.3 times bigger than the tiny former British Pacific colony of Tuvalu.