--- title: "He Wrote 0.5. The Book Printed 0.05. Merrick Osgood-Talabi Dies At 79." dek: "His field notebook, given to this newspaper by his daughter, records the tolerance twice in his own hand. Forty books, and one of our own wire items, print a figure ten times smaller. He wrote three times asking for a correction." kind: obit (Obituary) desk: Deep History author: Dr. Perpetua Nkemelu and Gilbert Ames (fictional) published: 2026-08-21T07:00:00Z url: https://theyburied.com/article/obit-merrick-osgood-talabi tags: Puma Punku, Tiwanaku, obituary, metrology, corrections genre: satire status: fiction — nothing in this story happened; every person, source and document is invented --- # He Wrote 0.5. The Book Printed 0.05. Merrick Osgood-Talabi Dies At 79. *His field notebook, given to this newspaper by his daughter, records the tolerance twice in his own hand. Forty books, and one of our own wire items, print a figure ten times smaller. He wrote three times asking for a correction.* The notebook says 0.5. It says it on the right-hand page of 3 September 2002, and again on the facing page of the 11th, in pencil, in the same hand, with the instrument and block number beside it both times. The book says 0.05. Merrick Osgood-Talabi, who took the measurement and paid for the book, died on 14 March. He was 79. The cause, according to the South Yorkshire coroner's officer, was cardiac arrest. He was on the pavement outside his flat when it happened, with a 600-millimetre builder's level in his hands, measuring the fall on a paving slab the council had relaid in February. ## Three weeks and one block He was a water engineer for thirty-four years: mains, then sewerage design, then flood risk. He retired in 2001 and flew to Bolivia in 2002 because he had watched a documentary and did not believe the arithmetic in it. He took the level, a set of feeler gauges, a straightedge he had made himself, and a permit. He measured one H-block — number 14 of the western group — because the permit allowed him one, and because he thought a single number obtained properly was worth more than forty obtained quickly. What he got was half a millimetre of deviation across the channel floor. It is roughly what a careful man with a spirit level should get, and it is roughly right. ## What the book printed In 2003 he had the report printed by a shop in Rotherham, in an edition of 400, and sold it at cost. Table 4, page 61, gives the figure as 0.05mm. That is the number quoted in forty books, in fourteen films, and — until this morning — in this newspaper. It is the number that means *machined*. Half a millimetre means a man with sand and patience. Five hundredths means something else, and five hundredths is what got into circulation. > **Figure:** The descent of one number — see https://theyburied.com/article/obit-merrick-osgood-talabi ## Where the point went Kenneth Ivo Ashworth-Bello set the 2003 edition and is 84. He does not remember the job and said so within a minute of picking up the telephone. He was useful anyway. Tables, he said, were the thing you re-keyed by hand: a scanner made a mess of columns, so somebody typed them again. "If you are asking whether a man could move a point one place in a column of forty figures," he said, "the answer is yes, and so could you, and so could the author when he checked it, which is why proofs exist." The typescript went in the bin in 2003 when the finished copies came back. No marked proof survives. We cannot say who did it. ## Three letters In 2009 he wrote to the publisher of the book that had made the figure famous. In 2014 he wrote to a production company. In 2019 he wrote to this desk. All three letters are published with this obituary, with his certificates of posting. None of them was answered. They are not angry letters. Four paragraphs each, a photocopy of the notebook page enclosed, and an offer to pay for the amendment slip himself. > I am not asking anybody to be interested. I am asking them to print the other digit. > > — Merrick Osgood-Talabi, letter to a production company, 11 August 2014 ## The block, measured again In May this newspaper paid a metrologist $5,200 to laser-scan block 14, alongside a replica cut with period tools, for a story about how long the cutting takes. Ingrid Saavedra-Cheung's certificate gives the original channel floor as **0.6 millimetres across 610 millimetres**. That is not 0.05. It is within a tenth of a millimetre of what a retired engineer wrote in pencil in 2002, and it took a laser scanner and a certificate to say so. He had been dead eight weeks when that scan was taken. The story it was taken for ran on 9 August and does not mention him, because when it was written we did not know his name. > **Caution.** This newspaper's wire item of 4 May 2021 gave the tolerance as 0.05mm. It was wrong. The correction was filed this morning, five years late, and eighteen months after the man who took the measurement wrote to this desk and got no reply. ## What his daughter has Ndidi Osgood-Talabi has the notebook, which she has given us, and 240 unsold copies of the book in a wardrobe in Sheffield. "People assume he was cross about the aliens," she said. "He wasn't. He thought that was daft and none of his business. He was cross about a decimal point. Those are two different men and only one of them gets invited on television." ## What this desk records He died on a pavement, of a heart attack, measuring a paving slab, because water was standing where the fall should have carried it away. He had complained to the council in January; the file shows the complaint, and shows the slab relaid on 20 February. His last notebook — a smaller one, in his coat pocket — records a fall of 1 in 190 where the specification asks for 1 in 80. He was right about that as well. Nobody has printed it before now. He is survived by his daughter, two grandsons, 240 books in a wardrobe, and one digit that this newspaper has finally got round to moving back. ## Sources (invented) - Ndidi Osgood-Talabi, His daughter — Interviewed twice at her father's flat; gave this newspaper the 2002 field notebook (June and July 2026) - The 2002 field notebook, 96 pages, pencil and ink, one block, three weeks — Given to this newspaper; photographed page by page and published in full with this obituary (June 2026) - Kenneth Ivo Ashworth-Bello, Compositor, retired; set the 2003 edition at a shop in Rotherham — Interviewed by telephone (17 July 2026) - Ingrid Saavedra-Cheung, Metrologist — Hired by this newspaper in May 2026 to scan an original H-block and a replica for a different story; her certificate is published (May 2026) - South Yorkshire coroner's officer, Public record — Written record request (20 July 2026) ## Documents cited (invented) - PX-1974: https://theyburied.com/vault/PX-1974 ## What we could not confirm - Who moved the decimal point. The typescript was thrown out in 2003, no marked proof survives, and the compositor is 84 and does not remember the job. Author, typist, compositor and proofreader are all live possibilities and we cannot choose between them. - Whether forty is the right number of books. We counted forty in English, French, German and Spanish by searching the figure and the site name together. We did not search Russian, Japanese or Chinese and have no idea what is in them. - Whether his 2009 and 2014 letters were read by anybody. We hold his certificates of posting for both. One firm has since been wound up; the other tells us it has no record of receiving anything, and we have no way to test that. ## Right of reply **Anselm Braithwaite-Oduya, who has cited the figure in three books** (He replied on 12 August. Printed in full and unedited, at his request and ours.): > I have printed 0.05 millimetres in three books. It will be 0.5 in the fourth. I am not going to apologise for the first three and I would like to explain why. > > I did not invent that figure. I took it from a printed table in a report that gave its instrument, its block number, its dates and its method, written by a man with thirty-four years of engineering behind him. That is not credulity. That is what a writer is supposed to do with a primary source. If the standard is now that every cited number must be re-measured by the person citing it, no book on this subject will ever be finished, including yours. > > Your piece has a villain and the villain is a decimal point, which is very satisfying and slightly dishonest. Here is the less satisfying version. > > In November 2011 I wrote to Mr Osgood-Talabi at the address printed in his own book, with four questions about his method, because I wanted to cite him properly. The letter came back marked gone away. I did not chase it. That is a failure and it is mine, and it is not the failure your story is about, so I expect you will give it a sentence. > > I would put the real thing more strongly than you have. Between 2003 and this May — twenty-three years — not one archaeologist, not one publisher, not one film company and not one newspaper paid to put an instrument on that block. Not me. Not you. Your metrologist did it in a day for less than the airfare to La Paz. Everybody quoting the number, myself very much included, preferred a figure in a book to a morning's work. > > And since we are being scrupulous with each other: your newspaper printed 0.05 in May 2021, eighteen months after he wrote to you and got nothing back, and you have put that in a shaded box halfway down. If a publisher had done that, you would call it burying it. > > I am sorry he is dead. I am sorrier that his dying is what moved this. I include myself in that and I would ask you to include yourselves. --- They Buried is a satirical newspaper. Every story, source, document and person in it is invented. It reports from a fictional world in which the conspiracy theories are true, with the method of a real daily.