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On 12 Jun 2005, at 03:10, W3FPR - Don Wilhelm wrote:
> They call it the 'English' system, but even the English folks now
> measure
> things in the metric system - only we Americans are the holdouts to
> the more
> convenient and sane metric system.
Not quite right. Us English (and the Scots and Welsh) still use the
imperial system for the important parts.
Beer still comes in pints, we drive at miles per hour, our doors are
six foot six high and so forth. Even when we are forced by Europe to
use metric units, we mix things -- for example I recently bought
stuff for a building project which included a two metre length of 2
by 1 wood (where the cross section is still measure in inches) and a
one metre section of 2 inch (diameter) plastic piping.
It is true that we've been forced to weight foods in metric but that
has led to weird things like it being (technically) illegal for your
butcher to offer sausages at a price for a pack of six -- he has to
offer them at so much per kilogram!! The petrol stations are forced
to sell us petrol and diesel by the litre not the gallon -- but that
was a government trick to avoid us noticing that the price had gone
up fivefold. Funnily enough most gas tanks still hold 10 gallons not
a round number of litres.
The good news is that it is still illegal (in England anyway) for
road signs to be installed that are in metric units and not including
their imperial equivalent. Bridge heights are still in feet and
inches and even if some Europe loving authority decided to use the
French system, they have to put the imperial distance too -- or
suffer quite a large fine.
As someone else mentioned, I've used metric units for scientific work
for most of my life, but I still think of temperature in Fahrenheit,
distance in miles, fuel consumption in miles per gallon, meat in
pounds and beer in pints -- the latter most often!!
- --
Regards
Andy, G8TQH
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