Category Archives: Education

Familiar with imperial? Do you know that…?

Miles, yards, feet and inches, pints, pounds and stones. Yes, fifty years after the UK embarked on the metric transition, we still need to be familiar with some of those old units.  In this article, Ronnie Cohen looks at some … Continue reading

Posted in Consumer affairs, Education, General, History, Law, Science | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

The 1895 Select Committee on weights and measures

This article looks back to the findings and recommendations of the 1895 Parliamentary Select Committee on weights and measures.

Posted in Education, General, History, Law, Transport | Tagged , , , , , , | 26 Comments

What do imperial traffic signs cost?

One of our regular readers, John Frewen-Lord, a retired quantity surveyor, has attempted to answer this question. In this article JF-L refers to the junior Education Minister’s suggestion that there would be more teaching of imperial units in the future … Continue reading

Posted in Education, General, Road signs, Transport | Tagged , , , | 36 Comments

A UK metric time line from 1980

In June last year, we published a time line up to 1980 showing progress towards the adoption of a single, simple, logical and coherent measurement system in the British Isles. We now bring this story up to date.

Posted in Consumer affairs, Education, General, Health, History, Law, Road signs, Science, Sport, Technical | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments

A trip to the Imperial Scrapyard

When consulting a reference book from 1896, we came across an article about imperial measures which provides a timely reminder that, even in its heyday, this ‘system’ was not as straightforward as some would now have us believe.

Posted in Consumer affairs, Education, General, History, Science | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

Cabinet Office gets its kilowatts in a twist

Visitors to the Cabinet Office website will see that this branch of the Government is measuring its energy use in “kilowatt-hours per hour”.  It is a sad reflection on the quality of civil service support given to this crucial part … Continue reading

Posted in Education, General, Science, Technical | Tagged , , , , | 20 Comments

London 2012 – winners and losers

As the Games draw to a close, we take a look at some of the winners and losers.

Posted in Education, General, Road signs, Sport, Transport, Views from abroad | Tagged , , , , , | 15 Comments

UK metric myths tumble during the Games

Metric Views revisits some of the myths around the metric system, and asks readers to suggest how many of these might have lost credibility as a result of the welcome given in the UK to the Olympic Games of 2012.

Posted in Education, General, Myths, Sport | Tagged , | 21 Comments

Metric majority attained

Preliminary results of the 2011 census for England and Wales indicate that those of the population who were taught metric at school now comfortably outnumber those who were taught Imperial.

Posted in Education, General, Road signs | Tagged , , | 22 Comments