[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote on 2002-06-29 21:58 UTC: > (2) Where you suggest impositions on the private sector (e.g., > �undefining� colloquial units, control of marketing of non-metric > instruments), I have to part company. These things are unnecessary (see > above), inherently create more government bureaucracy and more > non-productive burden on the private sector, and are, in my opinion, > morally corrupt.
I mentioned the option of legal restrictions on the sale and production of non-metric measurement equipment only, because I have heard reports that Australia used that option with good effect as a temporary measure in the 1970s. I don't know any other country that had tried this. There are numerous anecdotes that workers accept new units far more quickly if you take away and replace any equipment calibrated in the old units from their workplaces. Equally, use of customary units in the industry would drop rapidly, if none of the catalogues of your suppliers used them any more. Markus -- Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK Email: mkuhn at acm.org, WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>
