>john mercer wrote: >When you buy lumber in the U K is the length and width metric or imperial?
Some is, some is not. There is still a lot of non-metric legacy and/or soft metric particularly on doors etc. I don't know how to provide an estimate for 'lumber' as a category. Take a look at British web sites. >Are most house plans still in square feet? No. Architects and surveyors plans are totally metric (mm and m). This has been the case for years. A friend of mine is having a house built. I chastised him for using non-metric terms when telling me about all the details and problems. He would describe rafter spacing as about 18 inches but it turned out to be 500 mm. He came out with all the usual issues about 'natural/familiar' etc but he is now converted to speaking in metric (at least with me!). >When the tunnel under the English Channel was designed was it done >half imperial and half metric since there were 2 countrys working on the design? Excellent question. It is almost certainly 100% metric. The Chunnel is rail only. This is because British and French drivers would want to use the same side, or they would have had to build a knot in the middle to make the cars switch sides (joke). I am less confident about Concorde which made its last scheduled flight yesterday. There was even a big dispute (it went all the way to the prime minister) about whether there should be an 'e' on the end.
