[Healeys] Today's Rant

[Macklem, Timothy]

As I remember the switchover in Canada, the government decided to begin with everyday things, like the temperature, with the intention of moving on to industrial matters in due course. However when America decided not to convert its industry to metric Canada followed suit, given the volume of trade between the two countries. So the country is in metric limbo.

In the UK the opposite pattern occurred. The conversion of industry came first with everyday things supposed to follow, which they sort of did and sort of didn’t. So the temperature is in metric but the roads are in imperial. And as Simon says, volumes of milk or alcohol are labelled as metric but sized in imperial. All the kids think only in metric and old people have one more reason to be confused, whenever they pour themselves a drink for example.

Tim









On 24 Apr 2020, at 18:32, Michael Salter <michaelsalter at gmail.com<mailto:michaelsalter at gmail.com>> wrote:

The odd thing is that in many countries that have converted there are some really strange exceptions.
In Canada the construction industry, including I believe HVAC still uses imperial.
In the UK road distances are in miles but fuel is dispensed in litres making fuel economy calculations a tad odd!
Of course now here in Canada, as in most of the civilized world, fuel economy is expressed in litres per 100 km which to someone of my age is a bit confusing because "more is worse"  rather than "more is better" as it was in MPG.

M

On Fri, Apr 24, 2020 at 1:12 PM Robert Begani <rfbegani at gmail.com<mailto:rfbegani at gmail.com>> wrote:
What I heard back in the day,  a Michigan congressman saw a dual speed limit sign in English mph and Metric kph.  He thought “why should I and my constituents have to learn a European Language”.  Unfortunately, the Michigan car makers encourage him to propose an amendment to the US law which provided for a 10 year transition to the metric system of weights and measures.  This amendment put a temporary hold on the progress and has never been removed so there was no progression require conversion, to teach school children to learn and so on.  However, there are many roads in the USA which still have dual signs which by law cannot be removed as they are under phase one of the law.

Every country in the world using the English system of weights and measures signed the international treaty and began to covert to the metric systems, except the USA.  In all those countries children began to learn the system in the 60’s and the use of dual signs and gauges were acceptable until everyone in these countries became knowledgeable in the metric system.  Too bad we had to say “wait a minute “ which has lasted our lifetimes.

Note, all automobiles, and many manufactured products are fully metric today except the humans which use them.

Bob Begani

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