Posted on 09/17/2021 10:04:59 AM PDT by billorites
The British government has announced that U.K. businesses will once again be allowed to sell their products in traditional, British units of measurement, like pounds and ounces, instead of the metric system.
This move is a win for freedom-loving people everywhere, and the restoration of customary units should be a cause for jubilation in the streets.
The metric system has its origins in the French Revolution, as a way to stick it to the Ancien Régime. It didn’t go international until 1875, when a group of diplomats got together in Paris (which, historically, is a pretty good indicator that a bad decision is on the way) and signed the Treaty of the Meter. That treaty established the BIPM, an intergovernmental organization with a French name, to oversee a new, worldwide measurement system.
Just like that, with the strokes of a few pens, centuries of history began to be erased. The French Revolution may have been over, but the mindset of the revolutionaries lived on. The French Revolution was a time when men were, in the words of Edmund Burke, “pull[ing] down more in half an hour, than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in an hundred years.” The top-down imposition of the metric system did just that by erasing customary units.
By “customary units,” I don’t just mean the U.S. customary system, but any unit of measure derived through custom. If you read about the origins of customary units, you’ll find that many of them are based on specific occupations, like brewing, farming, and surveying. They were invented by people doing their jobs who needed a way to measure things. They developed units of measure that were useful to them and persuaded others to adopt them for ease of commerce. Customary units eventually became standardized through a bottom-up process.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
I knew my refusal to learn the metric system would be vindicated some day. The insistence on its use always seemed somewhat pretentious to me.
Ping
My favorite unit is the thou. One thousandth of an inch. A hybrid of metric and English.
Just like BLM.
I have a dial caliper that measures in thous.
I don’t mind having been taught the metric system in Junior High in the ‘70s. But at the time it was billed as, “We have to learn it because we’re changing to it”.
We adopted the system in 1866...but never did much about it until recently.
Back when I was a kid ~40 years ago, some teachers loved to tell us that in a few short years the metric system would totally displace the old system. And certainly metric does rule the world in certain areas like medicine where all the pills are in milligrams or auto engine size measured in liters and a few other things, but by golly no American ever talks about speed in kilometers per hour or their weight in kilograms or their height in centimeters. Despite those teachers’ predictions four decades ago, metric hasn’t won, and likely won’t win anytime soon.
A pig in a poke....................
What's wacky is the Fahrenheit scale. Anchored on the arm-pit temperature of the Fahrenheit family. Kinky, but true.
We have electronic ones now that do both.................
It’s ‘Celsius’ scale now...................
It never made any sense in the US. Our land tracts are divided in sections which are measured over land 1 mile by 1 mile, this easily divides into 640 unique sqaures of 1 acre each. One reason for surveying land into sections of 640 acres is the ease of breaking the land into halves and quarters using whole acre measurements. We still use this system for it's ease, but then I see some trying to use kilometers to express distance.
The Metric System does handle F=ma better.
There’s no reason to not to use Gallons as a measure of engine displacement.
Small minds apparently cannot deal with the metric system so let’s use an old system which we got used to but didn’t make much sense.
ML/NJ
I prefer kelvins
The 160 oz British gallon isn’t going to help Americans much. And what about the commonwealth countries which followed Britain down the metric rabbit hole?
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