Marcus Kuhn wrote in USMA 20739: >"Wizard of OS" wrote on 2002-06-30 01:12 UTC: >> > - The exact meaning of the old units could be undefined by >> > making it officially/legally equally valid to use alternative >> > definitions for the colloquial terms, in particular: >> > >> > 1 pound = 1/2 kg >> > 1 pint = 0.5 L >> > 1 inch = 1/40 m >> > >> > and from that follows >> > >> > 1 hundredweight = 100 pounds = 50 kg >> > 1 ton = 2000 pounds = 1000 kg >> > 1 quart = 2 pints = 1 L >> > 1 gallon = 4 quarts = 4 L >> > 1 foot = 12 inches = = 300 mm >> > 1 fluid ounce = 1/128 gallons = 1/32 L >> > >> > etc. >> >> Nice asset but what we are trying to realize is to kill ALL old units and >> not to make them accomplish to SI > >One can be of great help to accomplish the other. The original >introduction of the metric system in France stalled, until the >government decided that people are allowed to continue trading in >pounds, as long as they used metric pounds (1 lb = 500 g). > >Common words like pound/inch/foot cannot easily be extinguished from a >language. You can easily remove them from technical parlance and >measurement instruments, but a less educated person in a rural area, who >is concerned with applications such as home cooking, where measurement >tolerances of 10% or more are perfectly acceptable, will continue to use >the traditional terms for a long time after a country has gone >completely metric. In the light of that, it can be highly productive to >allow someone to sell you around 500 g using a scale calibrated in g or >kg, if you ask for a pound. I'm not talking about school curricula for >young people here, I'm talking about migration aids for less flexible >people, in particular older people without a minimal technical >education.
France tried this idea. Laws and regulations of 1800, 1812, and 1816, authorized this sort of liberalization. In desiring not unnecessariy to disturb the customs of the population, in fact the government had produced two yards, two feet, two busdhels, two pounds, etc. The metric reform was seriously compromised and anarchy started to reappear in the measurement field. In 1838 a law was passed to end this ambiguous situation. It decreed that from 1840 January 1 the use of all weights and measures, except those of the metric system, was forbidden under the penalty of serere punishment. In France the term "livre" (pound) still appears in colloquial speech, but never in posted prices. Joseph B.Reid 17 Glebe Road West Toronto M5P 1C8 Tel. 416 486-6071
