Apropos the confusion over the Shore meter and the durometer:

You can measure up to 3000V with an AVOmeter if you have the military model metal-body meter with the extra resistors, which the compulsive obsessive may call "ballasts".

In the same way you can measure the durometers of a particular batch or mixture of processed rubber if you have the correct Shore meter. 20-30 would be a soft rating, 40-70 a pretty hard rating.

I've noticed recently that printmaker's ink (1) rollers are rated by "Shore durometer", which suggests to me, without any research whatsoever because it's my exercise time and my trainer is just finishing her candy bar and cigarette, that even artists are aware that the measure of the hardness is a durometer, and that there are several meters the measurements of which have not been adequately standardized -- and now Jeff comes up with the Shore A, which suggests there is at least a B model of the most trusted model as well, which gives different results, the same way two DVM's that load the circuit under measurement differently will give two different results.

Another way of putting the preceding sentence is that even with a measurement in hand, you don't know **** because your measurement is valid only for a particular model meter. Charming.

Andre Jute
I'm not confused because I anyway do this crap by analogy and comparison or work it out the slow way by reconstruction from the first principles of physics (and fervent prayer that I'll be distracted by something more urgent before long)

(1) You may think of them as very expensive paint rollers.