Metrication

[Over The Hill]

I loved those exercise books you could buy at the Post Office that had lists of Imperial Measures on the back. Such great names - pole, perch, chain, rood...

I still like to convert prices to pre-decimal for fun, usually when wife or daughter buys something at a price that if you convert it, makes you think twice, as in: "Do you realise that birthday card you just bought cost 17 shillings!!!"

This from a lad whose weekly pocket money in the 60's was 3d (1/4 of a shilling for those who have no idea what I'm talking about).

I dont know where you can get a birthday card for only 17 shillings! Last one I got was well over two guineas.

Now you explained it is 1/4 of a shilling the young'n's will follow it OK.



I just remembered you used to get "fruit salad" sweets at 4 for a penny. And "black jacks" (with a non pc black man on the wrapper) for the same. Bazooka Joes were two a penny.

 

[aberal]

Can't stand this newfangled Centigrade. Why couldn't we have stuck to good old English Fahrenheit

From Wikipedia. Fahrenheit is the temperature scale proposed in 1724 by, and named after, the physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686–1736). Today, the temperature scale has been replaced by the Celsius scale in most countries, but it is still used in nations such as the United States and Belize. Fahrenheit was born in 1686 in Danzig.

You can stick with your mates in the States and Belize if you want matey boy...the rest of us have moved on.

 

[CharlieB]

The Daily Mail has consistently denounced metrication as the work of the Devil.

When it does its daily Le Tour reports, it puts the stage lengths in miles - I know of no other sports reporting that does that.

I've also noticed in media generally that they tend to adopt the measurement unit that makes the item more newsworthy, viz;

'Wow, it'll be a scorcher tomorrow - 86°!'

'Brrr, Britain will freeze tomorrow at minus 9°!'

…and we automatically know which measurement unit they're using, because 86 sounds a lot hotter than 32, and -9 sounds a lot colder than 17.

 

[tyred]

Fahrenheit is a strange one. I know there was a specific reason for choosing 32F as the freezing point of water (i.e. 0F represents some other specific value but I can't recall what it is now) but the Celsius scale is more intuitive - below 0C, freezing, above 0C, not freezing, simple. Although Mr Celsius originally had it the other way around with 0 as the boiling point and 100 as the freezing point (today's useless piece of information brought to you by Tyred).

I don't recall anyone I know ever using the Fahrenheit scale. The only time I use it is when mixing up dark room chemicals as they are of American origin and have instructions in Fahrenheit and it's pointless to convert.

 

[beanzontoast]

Now you explained it is 1/4 of a shilling the young'n's will follow it OK.

Tongue... cheek...

 

[beanzontoast]

I dont know where you can get a birthday card for only 17 shillings! Last one I got was well over two guineas.

Now you explained it is 1/4 of a shilling the young'n's will follow it OK.



I just remembered you used to get "fruit salad" sweets at 4 for a penny. And "black jacks" (with a non pc black man on the wrapper) for the same. Bazooka Joes were two a penny.

And IIRC Cadbury's did a foil-covered choc bar for 1/2d, 1d and 2d. And I sampled every one many times over!

 

[asterix]

Your starter for 10:

In what units was Trafalgar Square laid out?

Fathoms?

The metric system
Units were not standardized until fairly recently in history, so when the physicist Isaac Newton gave the result of an experiment with a pendulum, he had to specify not just that the string was 37 7/8 inches long but that it was "37 7/8 London inches long." The inch as defined in Yorkshire would have been different. Even after the British Empire standardized its units, it was still very inconvenient to do calculations involving money, volume, distance, time, or weight, because of all the odd conversion factors, like 16 ounces in a pound, and 5280 feet in a mile. Through the nineteenth century, schoolchildren squandered most of their mathematical education in preparing to do calculations such as making change when a customer in a shop offered a one-crown note for a book costing two pounds, thirteen shillings and tuppence. The dollar has always been decimal, and British money went decimal decades ago, but the United States is still saddled with the antiquated system of feet, inches, pounds, ounces and so on.

 

[661-Pete]

I sometimes wonder if Roger Bannister would have leapt to fame for running 1.609344 Km in under 240 seconds.....?

And all you young 'uns - you lot have never done real arithmetic, until you've calculated compound interest in pounds shillings and pence - oh and with the odd guinea thrown in to keep you alert....

But ... I'm 60 and at school we used metric, in the science lessons at least. Mind you some of the older masters were a bit - behind. I can clearly remember an altercation in a geography lesson. We were doing climate, I was laying down the law, that Celsius was going to take over, whilst the master was insisting that Fahrenheit wasn't done with yet! So he challenged me. "What's the outside temperature today, then?" I thought a bit, then said "About 15C, Sir, that is...." He interrupted me. "You see, the reason you hesitated was that you thought it first in F, and were then trying to do the F to C conversion in your head" "No I did not, Sir!" I protested. "I was trying to do the conversion the other way around..."

But I couldn't win the argument, that day in the 1960s. Maybe the argument still isn't won. All I can say is, I'm metric through and through. Except miles.

 

[Ticktockmy]

God I feel old now, I remember Farthings

 

[661-Pete]

God I feel old now, I remember Farthings

Me too. And I remember silver threepenny bits. Not many about, in my time, but my Mum used to show me the odd one she'd got in her purse. I never got one in my pocket money though - I reckon my Mum thought I would lose them.

 

[Ticktockmy]

Me too. And I remember silver threepenny bits. Not many about, in my time, but my Mum used to show me the odd one she'd got in her purse. I never got one in my pocket money though - I reckon my Mum thought I would lose them.

I have a quite a few silver threepenny bits, my Grandma used to put them in the Christmas pudding.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

The Daily Mail has consistently denounced metrication as the work of the Devil.

Haven't you cancelled that subscription yet Charlie?

 

[CharlieB]

Haven't you cancelled that subscription yet Charlie?

I'm just waiting for them to say something nice about the French…

 

[beanzontoast]

I remember the 5 min tv progs that ran after tea each evening just before we switched to decimal currency -

'Decimal 5' I think they were called.

Must have taken a while to think that title up.

 

[summerdays]

I'm of the mixed up lot... height 5' 6", weight in stones (but luckily I've avoided them for a while), measuring with a ruler: cm, with a tape measure more likely to be feet and inches.

I cook in oz's but I'm trying to make an effort with that one to help my children be more metric... and yet if its the recipes that I know out of my head then it has to be in oz. I can't visulise the metric weights so actually have to look to see how many grams are in a pack of butter where as I know how many oz's there are.

Though as dell says I can see a litre and do weigh liquids in grams when cooking since its a good approximation.

And I can just remember decimalization ... only the really smallest coins ... I was only about 4 or 5, but I do remember being told off for using an old word just after I started school.