On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 12:29 PM, McCarthy, Tom (xwave) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > If memory serves, Canada went metric around 1976 (silver jubilee?), and that > would put > TomB in about grade 2 at that time.
That would be right. I started high school that year. In Geography, each day we started the class by taking a ruler and neatly crossing out imperial measurements and changing it to metric. This was to bring the older text books "up to date". My dad was a carpenter and joiner. He always did everything in imperial, even after the change. I don't know about now, but up until 10 years ago I know that wood, etc. was still sold in imperial units: 2 x 4s in 10 and 12 foot lengths, etc. He grew up with Imperial, of course, but he preferred imperial measurements. He couldn't find a tape measure in metric to the 10ths of a millimetre at the time, or even to half a millimetre. Maybe you can now. He could find tape measures out to 1/64th of an inch (roughly 0.4 of a millimetre) and tape measures to the 1/32 of an inch (0.8 of a millimetre) were common. For him to switch to metric would have meant working in unacceptably large tolerances. > Most Canadians my age / TomB's age can easily convert common linear measures, > volumes, temperatures and weights on the fly (3m = 10', 4 L ~ 1 US gallon, > 331 ml beer is > called a pint, *9/5+32, 0.9 kg ~ 2 lbs). This ability fascinates my American wife. :-) -- Allan Goodall http://www.hyperbear.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Gzg-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu:1337/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gzg-l --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ground Zero Games" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/gzg-group?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
