I am convinced that you could ask many, if not most, native born Americans about the wonderful measure they seem to be willing to die for and they would be woefully ignorant.
How many know the number of feet or yards in a mile.? How many even know how many feet are in a yard? How many workers in a carpet salesroom even know that they are dealing with "square" yards when they refer to it as "yards"? Even when I bought topsoil for my lawn this spring the people at the nursery usually called it "yards" when they were selling me "cubic yards". How many know the number of ounces in a pound? How many know the relationship between pints, quarts, and gallons? I certainly cannot keep straight the relationship between ounces, cups, teaspoons, and tablespoons so I dread dealing with lawn chemicals. I think I knew as I feel certain did Paul that there were 12 pence to a shilling and 20 shillings to a pound, but I am certain that only the truest Luddites in Britain would still argue for a return to that money. I am thankful every day that I did not have to deal with such nonsense during my 45 accounting career! Many to whom I speak feel that our use of decimals with individual WOMBAT measures is the answer. However, they refuse to discuss the eventual need to use 5280 to change miles to or from feet, or the eventual need to use 3 to change feet to or from yards, or eventually to use 12 to change feet to or from inches, or 16 to change ounces to or from pounds, or all of the other "well-known and well-understood" WOMBAT to or from calculations needed. How can we get editors of the letters sections of our daily newspaper to print our letters advocating the metric system? I have had no success in Atlanta. Norm ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stephen Davis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, June 16, 2003 15:30 Subject: [USMA:26114] Re: In for a penny, in for a ... kilogram--your recent column - Appendix > You wrote: > > > You may know that the United States was the first nation to introduce > > decimal currency. Would you like to return to the "human touch" of > > the old British system of (this may not be right) 20 pence to the > > shilling and 12 shillings to the pound, the system discarded by the > > British in 1971 in favor of our own decimal system? > > > > Wrong way round!! It was actually 12 pence to the shilling and twenty shillings to the pound! > > Regards, > > Steve. > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > >
