Message text written by John Carmichael >I even have a ruler and lined velum drafting paper both graduated in decimal inches! <
In the UK many (if not most) Imperial measure rulers are graduated somewhere in decimal inches as well as in eighths and sixteenths and they have been ever since I was at school and much before that. Decimal graduation of linear measure has many advantages as has already been said. Imperial measures generally though have their own advantages both for the practicality of their units and for the way in which they can be divided to share among real numbers of people etc. I rather side with Peter Tandy here and feel that we lose a lot by being coerced into losing these practical and useful measures. My children (aged 29 and 25) both were metrically educated, both use metric measures all the time at work (Town Planning and Engineering respectively) but nonetheless prefer and even think in terms of some Imperial measures for normal living. I find this a sensible accommodation. What I do find sad and rather ridiculous is the current attempt by the European Union to enforce laws on countries like Britain to ensure that from Jan1st this year it is an offence (and a criminal offence at that incidentally) to sell food and other goods by Imperial measure. Shops are allowed to accept a request for an imperial amount (say one pound of apples) but have to measure and sell 0.454 kilogram. I find this a nonesense. Britain continues to have an 'opt out' but only for road distances (miles are still the only legal measure in the UK and any metric road signs that might be put up have to be removed), and for speed limits. As Peter says, Pints are legal for milk and beer. There a few others too that escape me. Not surprisingly the Government is trying to go easy on transgressions of this legislation in an attempt to defuse the resulting shambles and furore. I take a simplistic view to all this. I have nothing against teaching our children metric measures even to the exclusion of Imperial (though I'd prefer that not to be the case) but Imperial measures should be accepted and freely used whilst there is a demand. There is most certainly a strong demand as witness the polls taken by the pressure group 'The British Weights and Measures Association'. Certainly there should be no legal constraints on those who might wish to use Imperial measures either now or into the future. If businesses find they sell more into Europe they might well choose to metricate but if they do more business with the US they might not. They might even choose to offer both. They should be allowed to. I find it particularly sad when these 'all embracing' decisions affect some aspects of our heritage. British Waterways who, amongst other things look after the old 18th century canal network in Britain, (now mostly used for leisure) decided some time ago to metricate everything even those things that were designed so long ago in Imperial units. This wasn't simply a trivial conversion of measurements for record purposes, it meant that conservation ideals were compromised for example by the modifications of equipment to replace - for example - Imperial screw threads by metric. Indeed because such conversions are often very time consuming we now see unnecessary replacements of lock winding gear by strangely geared hydraulic systems - all in the name of metrication. A simple decision to let the two measurement systems coexist might have prevented much of this. The same has happened to a small extent in the BSS (must keep to the topic!) where we currently record sundial sizes on our Register in millimetres even though the vast majority of UK dials were constructed to Imperial measures. If it were not such a big job I might try and reverse this...! Ah well, such is life.... As the motto of the Weights and Measure Association says: 'Feet and Inches are Miles better' ! (Sorry to devote such time to this topic John - I know I should be writing my contributions for your FAQ file - but somehow this is an interesting topic!) Patrick
