Jim, this means that Australia made an historic breakthrough in human
relations, one that should make the Phoenicians green with envy, as it
should the British. Without the penal aspect of legal metrology, our friends
Down Under succeeded in getting its society to be totally steeped in SI. The
Sydney restaurant with the steak menu in grams, the sewer cover at
Melbourne's airport rated in kilonewtons, and both popular speech and
directional pamphlets making reference to metric units only ("go just a few
kilometers north") , were all engendered without the leer of the measurement
police. As far as the existence of legal metrology in this environment is
concerned, I had the privilege of visiting Australian National Measurement
Institute Director, Dr. Grahame Harvey at the NMI office outside Sydney,
and he was still employed as such as of March 2007.
Paul
----- Original Message -----
From: "James Frysinger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
Sent: 20 October, 2008 21:20
Subject: [USMA:41873] Re: metrication is accomplished by assent
I must disagree with Paul, which doesn't happen very often.
The UK stopped certifying non-metric scales after some date certain and
forbade the use of them for public scales. Some people elected to continue
making sales based on readings from those uncertified scales. That sort of
practice is a clear violation of law, particularly law that is meant to
defend the public against fraud in weights and measures.
Lawbreakers should be prosecuted, else the law has no teeth and soon
becomes meaningless. My understanding is that officials in the UK worded
citations to reflect the use of non-certified scales, as opposed to using
non-metric units.
Were it not for this legal perspective, the field of legal metrology
relating to weights and measures in the marketplace would not exist. The
tradition for such legal metrology goes back thousands of years and is
found in many cultures. In particular those of the Phoenicians, Egyptians,
and the tribes of Israel come to mind. For the latter, refer to the Old
Testament or Hebrew Bible and related writings.
Jim
Paul Trusten wrote:
I don't know if I'm going out on a limb or just expressing common sense.
Maybe I am about to go on the UKMA's list of the officially accursed, but
I don't think that people should be prosecuted simply because they
violate measurement standards. There has to be some other kind of action
or sanction taken in these cases short of the steel tip of the law. Look
at the public relations carnage this attitude has produced! We now have
the phrase "metric martyrs" in the UK press, and indeed, the original
one, Steve Thoburn, died at a young age, and whether or not his heart
attack was hastened by the metric controversy will never be known, but
now, in death, he looks like a literal martyr. To me, the spectacle of
a British metrological Torquemada going around and trouncing people over
measurement doesn't seem to give much chance of winning people over to
the metric side. I wonder how much more success the officials would have
had at getting out of the "very British mess" had they simply ignored
these few people who weighed tomatoes in pounds, and put that same energy
into finishing the changeover nationally. Also, the anti-metric forces in
the U.S. will continue to point to what looks like fiery British public
opposition to metric, and retard our progress here.
To me, the Australians succeeded at metrication so spectacularly because
they did it by assent. The following excerpt from the Australian
Department of Industry, Technology & Commerce's /Metrication In Australia
/so testifies:
/Early in the program the term "voluntary conversion" began to be used in
this context, yet clearly, the Metric Conversion Act would be law for all
Australians and the stated objects of this Act were that, progressively,
all Australians would change to the sole use of the metric system./
// /The term "voluntary" was, therefore, taken to mean that, through
industry-appointed sector committees, each industry would have both the
right and the responsibility to plan and implement conversion in its own
way and to its own schedule. At no stage would any industry or group be
asked to implement a program designed other than by the fullest
consultation and voluntary cooperation with the [Metric Conversion]
Board./
// /In addition the term "voluntary" meant that the Metric Conversion Act
1970 contained no penal clauses and that no new legislation would be
enacted specifically to enforce metrication. Instead, the force of law
would be achieved by amendment of existing State or Federal legislation
to incorporate metric measurements whenever the measurements to be used
in particular activities are specifically indicated. /
Paul Trusten, R.Ph.
Public Relations Director
U.S. Metric Association, Inc.
www.metric.org <http://www.metric.org> 3609 Caldera Blvd. Apt. 122
Midland TX 79707-2872 US
+1(432)528-7724
[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
--
James R. Frysinger
632 Stony Point Mountain Road
Doyle, TN 38559-3030
(H) 931.657.3107
(C) 931.212.0267
