You may be right and obviously it worked in Australia. But it never worked in Britain. It seems that in that country metrication using centimeters works better than with millimeters. The big great stumbling block for metrication is what happens in the retail trades. In the Netherlands hundred of 'metric martyrs' have been prosecuted in the 1820's and 1830's; and we all know what is still going on in Britain today. It paralyzed Canadian metrication. The main reasons why it took so long in France was once again severe resistance in the retail trades by shopkeepers and consumers alike and an anti-metric ruler, Napoleon, who had this hellish Systeme Usuel invented in 1812. Then there was a lot of political turmoil in France and at last came 1837-07-04 that saved the metric system from the same fate that time reforms had suffered and started its take off into the world.
Han ----- Original Message ----- From: "Pat Naughtin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, 2002-12-25 0:47 Subject: [USMA:24216] Millimetres, centimetres, and decimetres > on 2002-12-22 03.09, Han Maenen at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > <snip> > > The decimeter may be used here and there in Europe but that is very sporadic. The centimeter is the 'inch-like' unit here in the timber and other trades. It was officially called the 'Dutch inch' when we went metric in 1820, then slowly its proper name took over. I would also strongly advise against doing away with the centimeter. Just use it or the millimeter at your convenience. > <snip> I agree with you about the decimetre. To my knowledge, it was rarely used in metric conversions in Australia. For a brief moment, the leather industry played with the idea of using square decimetres to describe fresh and tanned skins, However, the industry leaders soon realised that workers on the tanning floor could not handle the sophisticated mathematics involved in measuring skin thickness in millimetres and skin lengths and widths is decimetres, so they then decided to do all length measures in millimetres and all area measures in square metres � and this seems to be working fine. > > On the second issue regarding millimetres vs centimetres, I have to disagree with you, not for reasons to do with the theory of metrology, not for the idea that one of these is superior or inferior to the other, but simply because it is my experience that the conversion to metric measures is much smoother and much quicker if millimetres are used. > > I respect your view that the "centimeter is the 'inch-like' unit here in the timber and other trades", but I am also confident that that became the situation after a long period of transition from the old Dutch units to modern metric measures � my guess would be about fifty years. > > The Australian experience is that metric transition can be done in less than a year � if you use millimetres � and in about fifty years � if you use centimetres. > > Nations such as the Nederlands (the first nation in the world to adopt metric units legally) have had enough time for the slow transition to have happened. Other nations, such as Brasil, have also had the luxury of this amount of time. Even France took fifty years before the metric process had enough momentum to be inevitable � I think they used centimetres. Cheers, Pat Naughtin LCAMS Geelong, Australia
