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with Robyn Williams
on Sunday 02/08/1998
Trouble with the Metric
System
Summary:
Advantages of the imperial
method of measurement compared with the metric method.
Transcript:
Robyn
Williams: Time for a confession: I have had two direct involvements
(to put it gently) in Australia's move to metric units. I was part of the
Decimal Currency Board which brought you Dollar Bill on the 14th February,
1966, and said that the new money would in no way fuel inflation. Ho,
ho.
Then in 1972 (February again I think) on joining the ABC
Science Unit, my first job was to produce a series of desperately cheerful
and unrelentingly positive promos for metric conversion. Now 26 years on,
we are used to the new units. Or are we? Here's Arthur Marcel from the
University of Queensland.
Arthur Marcel: On Sunday morning,
a couple of Decembers ago, or was it Januaries? while indulging in my
usual Sunday privilege of lying in until 9am and listening to the
wireless, I heard a well-meaning academic bemoaning the fact that the
metric system of measurement had been introduced into Australia in a
haphazard manner and consequently had not been universally accepted. Only
a year or so prior to hearing this complaint, I had been painfully
contemplating the same issue. These contemplates had taken place in a
small paved courtyard in Brisbane's western suburbs, where I stood on a
bare concrete slab under a blazing sun amidst a stack of red cedar beams
and rough sawn planks.
The contemplations were painful because I
had just realised the mistake I'd made in paving the yard before I'd built
the shed. The reflected radiation from the flat uniform surface and
surrounding brickwork increased my sweat-soaked discomfort to the point of
making it difficult to keep my eyes unblurred by the effects of wetness
and glare. Still I pressed on. I had meticulously drafted my own plans and
now they were open and tacked to a board alongside my carpenter's horse.
The task at hand seemed simple enough. I had to mark and cut the wood,
then nail, screw and glue it all together in the right order. Moreover,
each plank needed to be cut perfectly square and to an exact length. I was
as much a perfectionist then as now, and this shed was to be the
manifestation of an inner yearning for aesthetic purity. As usual that
day, I was engaged more in art than craft. My shed would be more than just
a shed, it would be a monument and I would be its creator. It would stand
as a testament to my ability as a modern human, with the aid of my newly
bought and still shiny modern tools, to transform nature's rough sawn
resource into an exact three-dimensional copy of the drawings. Every seam
had to be parallel, every cut had to be accurately measured and precisely
executed.
Now, even though I had been brought up on the Imperial
method of measurement, I had calculated all the shed�s measurements in
millimetres and neatly labelled each dimension with a three or four digit
number. This was not an instinctive process but I had used my new metric
measuring tape to get an idea of each dimension and then relate these
dimensions to the picture of the shed I had in my head. I was quite proud
of this measuring tape. Each centimetric division was neatly subdivided
into two sections of five millimetres each. However when I had bought this
tape, I was a little annoyed to find that it was a hybrid, with the old
Imperial system of feet and inches marked along the opposite edge. I had
not been able to find a purely metric one. I had, in fact, spoken to the
store person about this deficiency. I distinctly remember my dismay upon
being told that his customers still wanted both systems. I had scoffed at
the idea of a lot of old fuddy duddies being unable to cope with the new
and obviously better, metric system.
So away I went, enthusiasm
only surpassed by my ignorance, measuring, cutting, nailing, glueing,
pausing only briefly to take a swig from my jerry or to sharpen my pencil.
The sawdust started to pile at my feet. Unfortunately, so did numerous
badly measured and wasted offcuts. Suffice to say that by half way through
the day, faced with the distinct possibility of having to buy more wood if
I continued using the metric side of the tape, I went inside and using a
calculator, converted all my beloved millimetres to feet and inches. That
moment was a turning point. By the end of the week, when the shed was
almost finished, I had wasted far less wood in four-and-a-half-days than I
had done on that first morning.
Why? Yes, why? I didn't actually
know why at the time. It took weeks of thinking about it before I even
began to form an opinion. The conclusions I came to were twofold: firstly,
there is the matter of short-term memory recall. Metric measurements are
in the form of four digit numbers. There four-part 'packages' are quite
complex in that they don't have a reserved slot in a simple human mind
like mine. I mean I have pigeon-holes for all of the ten digits by
themselves, and even up to every possible combination of two of them.
However, there are 10,000 possible four-digit numbers, and for me they are
just not quickly graspable. So either they had to be learnt by heart, a
process which was slow and unreliable given the way an operation was
continuously repeated throughout the day, or they had to be repeated over
and over like a mantra while each measuring and cutting operation was
performed, an equally unreliable process given the distraction factor.
Writing the measurement down on an intermediate piece of paper was partly
successful, however it was also slow, and I often got out of sequence.
Fatigue and uncertainty was compounded by an increasing lack of confidence
and the need to constantly recheck the number before putting steel to
wood.
Secondly, there is the matter of the metric distance scale.
The standard metric tape that a prospective genius like myself buys in a
hardware shop is not very well designed. As I said earlier, each
centimetric division on my tape was subdivided into two half centimetric
divisions which were in turn divided into five millimetric divisions. Now
that meant that there were four millimetre graduations of equal height
between each centimetre graduation (these being the tallest) and each half
centimetre graduation (these being the next tallest). When trying to make
an exact measurement with this kind of tape, the eye, which is after all
the final arbiter of all human measuring techniques, no matter what the
intermediate machine might be, has to make a logarithmic judgement as to
where on this scale of up to four equally tall graduations the pencil must
fall. Now with time to spare, a comfortable desk, and just one or two
operations to perform, this is not such a difficult task. However, on a
hot, gusty day, with a face full of perspiration, dust, hair and glare, it
becomes truly eyeboggling. The most difficult measurements are those
ending in either a two or a three, or a seven or an eight. These two
graduations just blurred into one after an hour or so. Now I fully admit
that it was my desire for exactness that led me to such fine measurement,
however I feel it is a poor compromise to round everything off to the
nearest five millimetres, something that I wasn't prepared to
do.
With the Imperial system I didn't have these problems. Firstly,
the Imperial numbers were easier to remember. This was because each
Imperial measurement is separated into two packets of easily graspable,
one digit numbers, plus a packet of 15 possible fractions. There were 15
fractions because I was working to the nearest 1/16th of an inch, this
being the thickness of my saw blade and as precise as I cared to go.
Although I don't recall now, the only two digit number I could ever have
encountered that week would have been eleven inches. What I do recall
though was that not only could I consistently remember the current number
but I could remember a lot of the previous ones as well, to the point of
not having to refer to the plan for subsequent cuts of the same
type.
Secondly, the Imperial measurement scale is eminently
readable. The inches are wide enough not to be crowded out by their
indicating digit and the fraction scale is totally binary, meaning that
there is only one subgraduation between higher order graduations, each of
these being of correspondingly shorter height. There is no counting of
graduations required at all. I believe that my preference for the Imperial
system was not merely a case of having gotten used to it as a child,
though I may have had an advantage from my spanner days when it came to
remembering those 15 fractions. I no longer believe that the continued use
of Imperial by many people can be compared to, say, the survival of the
QWERTY keyboard or the VHS video cassette where an inferior system
prevailed simply due to earlier establishment. Of course it must be
remembered that I am only talking about analogue measurement of distance.
Metric scales not only have an obvious advantage for most forms of
digitally read measurement, but the system as a whole is superior when it
comes to calculation, concise notation, range of application, transfer and
transposition. Even so, I couldn't help asking myself why the need to
introduce metric across the board, especially where, as I have argued, it
seems inferior.
Indeed, the question becomes a broader one: What is
wrong with a hybrid system, especially when there is little need for
interaction between the separate parts? We already have the example of the
aviation industry sticking with feet for altitude measurement, and
nautical miles for navigation. They have done this because not only was
the system up and working well with an untold number of expensive
altimeters, distance gauges and charts, not to mention many expensively
trained brains already ticking away in feet and miles, but also because of
superior application suitability. The thousand-foot measurement is near
enough to the ideal vertical traffic separation unit (it's a close as you
want to go, yet gives thirty or forty easily graspable, two-digit packets
of information); and the nautical mile fits precisely into the
latitude/longitude positioning system of which it was born. In the air,
naturally, the wrong number can mean more than a few wasted planks of
wood, so the superior system is retained.
The Imperial system of
measurement is an evolved system, as against the metric system which can
be best described as revolutionary. The Imperial units were derived from
commonly experienced physical objects, such as the human foot and the
length of an English King's arm. Appropriate subdivisions kept unit length
and number within easy human range, making them so suitable for the
measurement of such common objects. The metric units, however, are
reductions of astronomical size quantities, using a constant subdivision
factor of ten. The length of the metre, a dimension which underpins the
whole metric system, was originally (and quite erroneously, as it turned
out), calculated as a fraction of the Earth's diameter. Given their
respective origins, it would be a very strange coincidence indeed if
metric units were superior to Imperial ones for everyday domestic
measurement applications. Perhaps though, the revolutionary origins of the
metric system have something to do with the wishes of those who want it
introduced across the board.
Perhaps an analogy with the computer
industry might be illuminating. In the '80s there was a trend for big,
totally integrated information systems. Many of these either failed or
never got going. It is now recognised that a network of smaller, localised
sub-systems, each handling their own particular area in their own
particular way, is superior. Not only are they easier to implement and
maintain, but each sub-system evolves to best meet the needs of its
particular service sector.
Also let us not forget the aesthetic
argument. Some systems have an appeal which transcends their utility. For
instance, take the world's surviving languages. I have heard various
estimates, but 6,000 seems to be a popular number. It is forecast that in
the next 100 years only half of them will have survived the interactions
of the global village. From a utilitarian point of view isn't that great!
Better communication all round, less misunderstandings between people and
nations, etc. Yet why are there so many language preservation societies,
academic institutions and even national governments bemoaning such
linguistic attrition and doing their best to preserve their respective
native tongues, and why, closer to home, are Australians resisting the
Americanisation of our spelling? Why do so many of us think it worth the
effort to keep the 'u' in 'neighbour'?
Whenever humans attempt to
interpret and manipulate reality, there will always be conflict between
our need for specificity and our difficulty in sustaining complexity. I
believe that not only is there nothing inherently wrong with hybrid
systems, but that it is only hybrid systems which can best optimise this
relationship. Hybridisation is an inalienable part of the process of
natural selection, as are indeed, man's futile attempts to circumvent it.
Hybridisation brings together the best and the worst traits, and time, all
24 hours per 7 days per 52 weeks per year of it, does the rest. The metric
system is a wonderful invention, and will probably always have a place in
this technological and increasingly computerised world. However, it isn't
the universally superior measuring system it's often touted to be,
especially when it comes to getting simple things like, for instance,
building garden sheds, done efficiently and expeditiously. The capacity of
human beings to know and use many systems simultaneously shouldn't be
under-rated, for given an opportunity they will always tend to use what
best fits their purpose.
Robyn Williams: Hope you're right.
I've always favoured metric time myself.
Arthur Marcel is a
Brisbane English teacher completing a Master's Degree at the University of
Queensland.
Next week Ockham's Razor comes from Melbourne, where
Nick Birrell has been wondering about our intellectual future. I'm Robyn
Williams.
Guests on this program:
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Arthur Marcel
English Teacher
Brisbane
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