EU gives up on 'metric Britain'

BBC ^ | 11 sep 2007 | BBC

[oblomov]

The European Union is set to confirm it has abandoned what became one of its most unpopular policies among many people in Britain. It is proposing to allow the UK to continue using pounds, miles and pints as units of measurement indefinitely.

The European Commission will announce later it is leaving all future decisions to the British government.

The decision is being seen as a victory for supporters of the ancient imperial system, the so-called "metric martyrs".

Pint saved

The UK had been due to set a date for phasing out all its imperial measurements within three years.

This would have meant setting a deadline for ending the traditional delivery of pints of milk - and the sale of pints of beer in Britain's pubs.

Every one of Britain's road signs would have had to be changed from miles to kilometres - a move which opponents warned would be both expensive and confusing.

Steve Thoburn made headlines around the world over his campaign

But it was the move, begun in 2000, to make Britain's market traders sell their produce in kilograms rather than pounds and ounces which caused outrage among traditionalists.

Sunderland grocer Steve Thoburn inspired the "metric martyr" movement with his defiance of the order to abandon the imperial measurements.

[Logophile]

Well that depends : ) My wife took a cooking class in France and lo and behold they used cups, teaspoons, etc. The Metric system just doesn't adapt very well to cooking. It is great for decimals, but not for fractions and proportions.

I am told that serious bakers measure by weight, not by volume.

That said, I would question your statement that the metric system does not adapt well to cooking. Why not?

[Logophile]

You left off a couple dozen more tons. Tons of tons one might say...

Indeed. Anyone who is interested can enter "define:ton" into Google to get more definitions.

[null and void]

I’m old fashoned. I used a dead tree dictionary. I was amazed by how many kinds of tons there are, not just weight, either...

[Deguello]

Around 1974/75 they tried to sell us gasoline by the liter. When everyone put the conversion to a calculator, we found we were being severely ripped off.

Those gas stations lasted about two weeks before they were forced to go back to gallons to get their customer base back.

[dfwgator]

Announcer: And now, Mr. Joseph Franklin of the U.S. Council of Standards and Measures.

Joseph Franklin: Thank you. Tonight I'd like to talk to you about how the new metric system of conversion will affect you. This is one in a series of public reeducation programs designed to make Americans aware of the metric conversion to take place in the next ten years. Most Americans already know that the measurement of miles will be discarded in favor of kilometers - a system of measurement based on the unit of tens and already in use in most of the world. Few people, however, know about the new metric alphabet: the "Decibet"; "deci" from the Greek "ten", and "bet" from our own "alphabet". Let's take a look, shall we? [ holds up large poster of the Decibet ] Now, isn't that simple? Only ten letters. Twn fingers.. ten letters.

[ holds flip cards ]

Now, let's take a look at some specifics.

[ shows Card 1 ] A, B, C, and D: our first and most popular letters will remain the same.

[ shows Card 2 ] E and F, however, will be combined and graphically simplified to make one character.

[ shows Card 3 ] The groupings GHI, and..

[ shows Card 4 ] LMNO will be condensed to single letters. Incidentally, a boon to those who always had trouble pronouncing LMNO correctly.

[ shows Card 5 ] And finally, the so-called "trash letters", or P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, and Z, will be condensed to this easily recognizable dark character.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten! Now, let's take a look at how this change will affect our daily speech habits.

[ shows card ] In the EF grouping addition, the word "eagle" would remain basically the same in character, but would be pronounced "efaglef". However, certain words previously beginning with the letter F, like..

[ shows card ] .."fish", would be pronounced with an additional E sound: this, "efish". "I caught a big efish."

[ shows card ] "Goat" would remain "goat".

[ show

shows card ] "Hotel" will carry the G letter addition, but as in many words beginning with the GH sound, such as "Ghana", the G would remain silent; thus, "hotel". However, words beginning wih I..

[ shows card ] .. as in "industry", will be pronounced "gindustry". The meaning will remain the same. LMNO's grouping is similar.

[ shows card ] "Mucus" will be LMNOucus".

[ shows card ] "Light" would remain "light".

[ shows card ] And "open" would then ne "LMNOpen", as in, "Honey, would you LMNOpen the door?" Finally, the "trash letters", or the letters from P to Z, would then make a stop sign appear like this: [ holds up stop sign with unintelligble blotch on it ] So there you have it. We hope to eventually establish the Universal Metric Alphabet in America by 1979. Join me next time, when we explore the changes you'll be seeing in alphabet soup and spelling bee contest rules. But now, let's sing the old favorite, the childhood "Alphabet Song", as we will hear it in the future..

[ singing ] "A, B, C, D, EF.. GHI.. J, K, LMNO.. [ blotch ]"

[LexBaird]

The Imperial System works like the human mind works, dividing things into halves, quarters, eighths, etc. This is the natural way for humans to do things. This makes things good for the carpenter but bad for the accountant.

The Metric System works like an computer works, with decimal fractions, breaking things up into tenths.

The clear solution is to ditch the decimal system, and go with the much more mathematically sensible base-12. Then we can actually get a gross of items at the grocer.

[gridlock]

I am not in favor of forcing people to drop familiar units of measurement: miles are fine for measuring driving distance; pints are OK for dispensing milk; yards are just right in football. But serious work in science, engineering, or commerce requires more carefully defined measurements; ambiguity and imprecision are not good.

The Metric System has a place in technical areas, perhaps, but I have been working in Engineering for the last twenty years, and we've been getting along just fine with the old units. You know which ton you are using because of the context. If I am buying gravel, it's 2000 pounds. If I am buying an air conditioner, it's 12,000 BTUH. If I am buying a large refrigeration plant from an old-timer, it might be 144,000 BTUH, so it is best to ask.

Traditional systems evolve. New systems are imposed. Social evolution is respectful of the humans who make up the society. There is no need for respect of the individual in a system that is imposed.

And, of course, the traditional system relies on the human ability to divide things into halves and thirds. Ask any five-year-old child to divide a line into halves and thirds, and he will get it right to within 5% or so. Ask an adult to draw a mark indicating a tenth, and they will be all over the board.

[NativeSon]

Slowly us British are rolling back the bureaucratic carpet of socialist/liberal EU, inch by inch, yard by yard and mile by mile...

Good news indeed... I rarely travel but my only trip across the Atlantic was to visit England. Small things like this bolster my decision to return.

[gridlock]

The clear solution is to ditch the decimal system, and go with the much more mathematically sensible base-12.

Actually, base-8 makes a lot more sense, since 8 is the cube of 2. Eight in base-8 (10) can be divided into halves (4), quarters (2), eighths (1), sixteenths (0.4), thirty-seconds (0.2), and so on, all the livelong day.

The only reason we count in base-10 is we happen to have ten fingers. Ten factors into two and the Prime Number 5, which means breaking it down is just a pain in the butt.

Base-8 also would make humans and computers work more similarly, because the binary eight (100) is similar to the base-8 eight (10).

[Clemenza]

England is not my “mother.” At best she is a dowdy old Professor, whose lessons in government and law are well remembered, but whose other traits (imperialism, snobbery, sarcasm, bigotry) are best ignored.

[gridlock]

The Imperial system is more the arbitrary decision of long ago rulers, not based so much on generic human nature. The foot is called the foot because some king had a long foot that ended up being a foot long.

And a meter is one ten-millionth the distance from the North Pole to the Equator on a meridian through Paris, France. This makes more sense to you?

I have never traveled from the North Pole to the Equator on a meridian through Paris, France, and would have a hard time breaking up that journey into ten-million equal parts if I had, but my foot happens to be more or less the same size as that ancient king's. How about that?

[null and void]

The only reason we count in base-10 is we happen to have ten fingers.

I have eight fingers. The thumbs are just there to keep track of the octades...

[LexBaird]

That said, I would question your statement that the metric system does not adapt well to cooking. Why not?

Because decimal math sucks at halfing and doubling in even increments. Ten can be factored into 1, 2, 5 and 10, of which only 2 can be evenly halfed again with another whole number. Twelve can be factored into 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 12. Sixteen into 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16.

[null and void]

IIRC, the inch used to build the Great Pyramid is one millionth of the distance from the north pole to the plane of the equator. Just a hair longer than the British inch.

[LexBaird]

We crossed in reply. Either base-8 or -12 make more sense than base-10. I just like twelve because it has more traditional cultural reference. Dozen, gross, foot, etc. Base-8 will probably be more culturally apt for the computer generations of bits and bytes.

[gridlock]

Resistance to the metric system wasn’t the result of ignorance or inability to change.

There is more to it than that. The Metric System makes no sense. An eighth is 0.125. That makes no sense at all.

[NavyCanDo]

The worse thing for me was the Celsius and Fahrenheit conversion. Who wants to go to the beach when its 23 degrees?

Not to worry - the conversion factor was soooo easy. (Not)

Tf = (9/5)*Tc+32; Tc = temperature in degrees Celsius, Tf = temperature in degrees Fahrenheit

For example, suppose you have a Fahrenheit temperature of 98.6 degrees and you wanted to convert it into degrees on the Celsius scale. Using the above formula, you would first subtract 32 from the Fahrenheit temperature and get 66.6 as a result. Then you multiply 66.6 by five-ninths and get the converted value of 37 degrees Celsius. EASY HUH?

[mc5cents]

The US Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?

Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were designed by English expatriates. Why did the English people build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the old, long distance roads, because that's the spacing of the old wheel ruts. So, who built these old rutted roads?

The very first long distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for, or by, Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

Thus, we have the answer to the original question. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot. Specs and bureaucracies live forever. So, the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's back end came up with it, you may be exactly right - because the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.

Now the twist to the story: When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on the launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are the solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol, at a factory in Utah (very near Promontory Point!). The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line to the factory runs through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than a railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So, a major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined by the width of a horse's rump!

(Note: That was an intriguiging - and scary - fact about the longevity of bureaucrats and specifications!)

[Petronski]

Just goes to show: a milspec never dies.

[A Longer Name]

Ironically, the Americans were the early enthusiasts and promoters of the metric system, and one of the original signatories of the Treaty of the Meter (1875). Ten years before that the Congress authorized the use of metric system and supplied each state with the standard metric weight, etc. Then something happened at the end of 19th century, and the English system somehow became a part of American identity.