During a broadcast on BBC Radio Scotland on 5 January 2009, viewable on the UKMetric YouTube channel, we heard again the suggestion that there is little need for the UK to continue with the metric changeover as imperial measures are similar to those used in the USA. If only this were true.

Practice in Britain and in North America had begun to diverge even before the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The governments of the thirteen colonies had their own physical standards of English measures, which seldom agreed precisely with those in Britain. And in 1790, when the newly-established federal government set about the creation of a unified system of measures for the United States, alignment with measures in Britain was low on its priorities. Later, a Royal Commission was appointed in the UK, then comprising Great Britain and Ireland, to consider the reform of weights and measures. The resulting Weights and Measures Act of 1824 retained many English measures, but not all of the unit names and with slightly different values, and it was this disparate collection that eventually acquired the title “imperial”.

So where does this leave us now?

The surviving imperial measure of liquid volume, the pint, differs significantly from its US counterpart. This is illustrated by the most popular size of supermarket fresh milk: the quart (0.95 litres) in the US, and 2 pints (1.13 litres) in the UK. The gallon, though obsolete in the UK, is still used to indicate fuel consumption in both countries – identical cars in the US achieve 17% less mpg due to the smaller US gallon. The imperial fluid ounce is now obsolete, so we need only remember that there are 16 (not 20) US fluid ounces to a US pint.

All of the imperial dry measures are also obsolete, so the confusing conversions between US and UK bushels, pecks, dry gallons and dry pints belong, happily, to history.

Problems arising during WW2 from differing standards for Canadian, UK and US equipment gave rise to a decision in 1948 to adopt a unified inch system of threads in all three countries. This led in 1959 to agreement on common definitions of the foot (0.3048 m) and the pound (0.453 592 37 kg). These definitions found their way into UK law in the Weights and Measures Act 1963.

However, although these definitions have been identical for fifty years, there remain many pitfalls for transatlantic travellers. The imperial ton of 2240 pounds is obsolete, replaced by the tonne. The US ton of 2000 pounds lives on. So we need to remember that one ton is about 0.907 tonnes. And of course, if you ask an American his weight, he will give it in pounds; here in the UK, the use of stones is being passed on to succeeding generations, to the bewilderment of the rest of the world.

Campaigners for the retention of imperial measures, confusingly also called ‘British measures’, make much of the importance of the ounce as well as the pound. Practice in the USA may disappoint them, as many supermarkets price random-weight pre-packs of meat and cheese in pounds and decimals, and weigh loose fruit and vegetables at the check-out likewise.

This preference in the US for decimals, instead of the varied relationships enjoyed by users of the imperial system, appears to extend to the highway. In the UK, measures of distance up to ½ mile have to be shown on road traffic signs in yards, not feet. Over this, distances must be shown in miles and fractions thereof. Feet and decimals of miles are prohibited. In the US, distances in feet are normal and distances shown in yards on signs very unusual. It is reassuring to know therefore that distance measures on UK road signs will confuse overseas visitors wherever they come from.

At the beginning of this article, it was suggested that the UK and the USA are linked by a common measurement system. In the light of the above, how can this be?

In their progress in adopting the metric system, the two countries have followed similar courses. In the early 1800’s, while Presidents Jefferson and John Q Adams were looking into the reform of US weights and measures, the UK appointed a Royal Commission with a similar task. In 1866, metric became legal in the USA for all purposes; late to the party, the UK followed in 1896. The USA was one of the earliest signatories to the Metre Convention in 1878. Late again to the party, the UK signed in 1884. However, in 1965, the UK was first to see that an increasing proportion of world trade would be carried out in metric units, and signalled a changeover from the units generally used in industry at that time. The USA followed in 1975. Both countries saw their hopes of a smooth, swift and effective transition dashed with a change of leadership in the early 1980’s. A large number of UK manufacturing companies did not make the switch and many of these have now gone out of business. Could it be that much of US manufacturing industry is now following the same path?

As the two countries work at a leisurely pace towards completing the metric changeover, there exist none of the differences that separate the imperial and the English/US Customary measurement systems. Both the UK and the USA, as signatories of the Metre Convention, share a commitment to adopting a truly international system of measures, and to participating together in its continuing development. So yes, the two countries are linked by a common measurement system, albeit an international one.

“Now navigation.  There are still lots of aircraft that are flown around the world that do not have sophisticated navigation aids and pilots need simple ways of mentally calculating navigational requirements.  One of the most common is based on the fact that 1 radian (the angle at the centre of a circle that is subtended by an arc equal to the radius) is approximately 60 degrees.  The navigational trick is known as the “one in sixty rule.”

Very simply put, if a pilot is 1 mile off track after 60 miles then the  error is 1 degree which gives a simple way of calculating the change needed to take out the error..  As an example, if the distance to be flown is 120 miles and after 60 miles the pilot identifies that he is 1 mile off track then he needs to turn 2 degrees to make good his destination (one to fly parallel to his track and one to close the destination).   Now this will work for any unit of measurement.  One banana off after 60 bananas is still an error of 1 degree.   The crunch it seems to me is that, as I understand it, the internationally agreed global positioning system is still based on latitude and longitude (all the GPS systems I have dealt with start with a very sophisticated lat/long model of the earth) and the angle subtended by one minute of arc at the earth’s surface on a latitudinal meridian is a nautical mile.  Now any maritime chart or aviation chart/map is overprinted with the lat/long grid so it is very easy to see 1 minute of arc and therefore see what 1 nm [sic] looks like irrespective of the scale of the map.   It makes using the one in sixty easier.  One could do it in kms but I think you would need to know the scale and use a ruler to measure kms so why make life difficult?.  As the Merecats would say – Simple.   Incidentally this also explains the dominance of using knots as a measurement of speed.”

This was my reply:

“Thanks for the explanation, which I think I understand. [Actually, I didn’t fully]

In your example, the deviation from course (1 nautical mile or banana) divided by the distance travelled (60) is in fact the sine of the angle subtended, and inverting this gives 0.955 degrees – i.e. roughly one degree off course. Presumably, this is good enough for travelling short distances. ( I couldn’t see the relevance of radians, but I note that one radian is 57.296 degrees, and this divided by 60 degrees gives 0.955). So far, so good. However, as you say, this relationship is independent of measurement units.

Turning to the latitude and longitude grid, surely this only works in a due north-south direction, as the parallels of latitude are shorter as you approach the poles. Measuring from my Philips world atlas, I calculate that 5 degrees along the equator (i.e. 300 nautical miles) in Brazil represents 554 km, which gives 1846 m per nautical mile (the SI definition of a nautical mile is 1852 m), whereas, measuring horizontally from British OS maps, one degree at latitude 50 degrees north (The Lizard) represents 1190 m. At 60 degrees north (Shetland) it is 940 m. So even at the scale of the UK, there is a considerable difference – and this ignores the related problem of portraying a curved surface on a flat map! (I also thought of introducing the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, but that would be a digression).

I suppose that if you have a pair of dividers to hand you could use the vertical scale of minutes of latitude to set the dividers to measure in nautical miles, but assuming that the map or chart has a scale in km, it would be just as easy to set it to measure in kilometres. Or use a standard scale rule calibrated in metres at the appropriate scale (such as architects and planners have used for 40 years). (The 1939 OS national grid, which I believe is used by the army, is based on kilometre squares).

(Incidentally, I gather from browsing internet sites that GPS can use decimal degrees as an alternative to degrees, minutes, seconds – so it is not necessarily dependent on minutes – hence, nautical miles are not essential to GPS systems. As I understand it).

So my conclusion is that the claimed advantage of using nautical miles is fairly weak. It must be primarily a question of resistance to change and the historical domination of the Americans in the aviation industry. Of course, changing the habits of a lifetime is always inconvenient at first, but I would have thought the long term advantages of a world-wide system, used and understood by all for all purposes, far outweighs the temporary inconvenience of a small minority having to adjust to change.

Incidentally, as NATO armies work in km, whereas air forces work in nautical miles (and feet for height?), what units do they use when they need to talk to each other about ranges, distances, heights etc – e.g. an OS map shows that a mountain is 782 m high, so what altitude do I need to fly at to clear it? (I seem to remember a Chinook helicopter flying into a hillside on the Mull of Kintyre – attributed to pilot error – could confusion over measurement units have had anything to do with it?).

Anyway, I have gone on too long. Hope this makes some sense.”

There was no reply from my correspondent – so I did a little more research.

It seems that the fundamental problem is that maps are flat, whereas the Earth is (roughly) spherical. So a co-ordinate map grid based on kilometre squares that is suitable for a relatively small land area – say, the UK – does not work when extended to a continent. (I am advised that navigators on ships crossing the Irish Sea have to make minor adjustments when they sail from the British National Grid area into the Irish grid area, as the latter has a different origin). For longer distances, navigators use latitude and longitude as a co-ordinate system in order to determine their position and their course.

However, what I still do not understand is why this should affect the units of distance used. There is no particular logic in dividing the Earth’s circumference into 360 degrees of longitude and then into    21 600 minutes (i.e. 360 x 60), and then using the distance that one minute represents at the equator (and only at the equator) as the basis for a unit of measurement.  Wouldn’t it perhaps be more useful to divide the distance from the equator to the poles by a convenient number – say, 10 000 – and then base measurements on that?  But, oh, I forgot: that’s exactly what the founders of the original metric system did.

In fact, until the Second World War, most aviation outside America and the British Empire actually did use the kilometre for distances (and, consistently, metres for height), and indeed, for domestic aviation, Russia still does.  It was only the post-war dominance of the USA in IATA and ICAO (supported of course by the British) that imposed nautical miles on an otherwise metric world.

Or have I missed or misunderstood something?  Can anybody help?  Above all, is there any hope of getting the situation changed?

Our correspondent wrote:

“I wonder if anyone has the time and resources to write an article for Metric Views on [whether] the policy of gradual metrication been a success compared with other country’s policies of doing it in less than a decade.  Could we put together any objective measures by which you might measure the success of such a policy – cost, public acceptance, lack of resistance from stakeholders etc.?  Just a thought.”

The first thing to be said is that the original intention, when the policy of metrication was announced in 1965, was that the job would be completed in 10 years – that is, by 1975. However, although behind-the-scenes preparations were well advanced by 1970, including a target date for converting road signs in 1973, little had actually been achieved in practical terms by the time of the general election.  Edward Heath unexpectedly won the election, and although famous for taking the UK into the EEC, he did little to encourage metrication.  Indeed he allowed his Transport Minister to postpone indefinitely the conversion of road signs, and the 1972 White Paper announced that conversion would in future be voluntary and gradual: “There will be no “M-day” for metrication.” (paragraph 12),   No Government since then has had the commitment or political courage to set a new target date.  Instead they have diverted criticism on to the EU.

This policy of “voluntary gradualism” was reaffirmed by Tony Blair in a letter to Lord Howe in 2004, and even more recently by Lord Drayson (Minister for Science) in a letter to the Chairman of UKMA last December, in which he said:

“The Government’s longstanding policy in relation to units of measurement is to move towards full metrication in time, but at a pace that recognizes that a significant proportion of consumers are still more comfortable with using imperial units.  Metric units are used for the majority of transactions regulated by the Weights and Measures Act 1985.  The United Kingdom is already substantially metric …… We recognise that a single system of units of measurement as a reference point is vital for fair trade and consumer protection.  However, we also believe it is important that imperial units can continue to be used alongside metric ones whilst they remain more familiar for some consumers.”

The sad result of this policy, as we know to our cost, is that the UK has got half way through metrication and got stuck, with little prospect of resolution without decisive intervention by the Government.  So we have the “very British mess” of two systems described on UKMA’s website at this link.  I think it can fairly be said that the UK’s approach has failed.

Other countries which commenced conversion in the late 1960s or early 1970s have tried different approaches. Australia and South Africa are examples of countries that largely completed their changeover within the 10 year timetable, whereas the USA has been even slower than the UK – albeit there is considerable unseen progress (e.g. in the American car industry).  Canada has converted its road signs but encountered resistance to the changeover in retailing, putting it further ahead than the UK in some ways but further behind in others (the American influence is of course very strong).  The Irish Republic is an interesting case.  Initially slow like the UK, it succeeded in converting its road signs and speed limits in 2005 and has now largely completed its programme – albeit pints (imperial) linger on in pubs.  One may speculate that one of the reasons why the Irish overtook the Brits is that by leaving the sterling area and later adopting the Euro, and then completing the metric changeover, they were demonstrating their independence from their former colonial masters.

Can any lessons be drawn from all this?  Can we in fact, as our correspondent asked, develop any objective measures?

I think this is actually an impossible task.  As far as costs are concerned, most of the costs were incurred so long ago that, even if they had been identified at the time, there are no surviving records of them.  Ditto the benefits.  What we can say, however, is that the UK has failed to reap the benefits of its investments in new machine tools, retraining programmes, school textbooks etc precisely because a large proportion of the population still uses obsolete units of measurement.  The “voluntary/gradual” approach means you get all the costs but not all the benefits.

The second criterion suggested by our correspondent was public acceptability.

Clearly, the UK has had a problem here – but arguably a problem that is self inflicted.  Whereas in, for example, Australia, the government was careful to explain the reasons and the programme for metrication (see this link for extracts from the official report), and then implemented the changeover relatively quickly, the UK Government tried to do it by stealth and without explaining the reasons to the general public. They also tried to do the easy bits first (pharmaceuticals, building and construction) while hoping that the difficult bits (esp retailing) would be addressed later long after the current politicians and civil servants had left office.

It is probably also true that Britain has a larger proportion of traditionalists who reject all change, especially if it appears to affect imagined icons of Britishness. Then of course came the incorrect identification of the issue with the EU, and so opposition to metrication became a metaphor for Euroscepticism.  If only the thing had been done quickly, before the anti-European campaign had been cranked up, it could all have been history by the end of the 1970s.

The third suggested criterion, resistance from stakeholders, requires a little examination.  The primary stakeholders (manufacturing and building industries, local authority trading standards officers, major retailers, consumer representatives) have generally supported (or at least acquiesced in) metrication.  The main resistance has come from independent shopkeepers and market traders, supported or exploited by right wing political groups.  In economic terms these are not all that significant, but by dint of political stunts (the so-called “metric martyrs”) they have captured the interest of the media and thereby won some sympathy amongst the general public.  Again it has been the failure of politicians to explain the changeover, take responsibility for their own policy and carry it through in a reasonable timescale that has allowed grievances to fester and grow.

So my response to our correspondent’s question – whether countries that converted quickly to metric units fared better or worse than countries that have tried to do the job voluntarily and gradually – is that the question really answers itself.  “Voluntary gradualism” merely prolongs the agony and does not work.  Unfortunately, successive UK governments have refused to learn from the experience of more successful countries such as Australia (or even Ireland in respect of road signs) and, despite all warnings, have deliberately followed those policies that are least likely to succeed.

The United Kingdom (of Britain and Ireland at that time) came late to the party and was the eighteenth signatory of the Convention in 1884.

The importance of the Convention is illustrated by the recent history of the yard and the pound.

Until 1893, the United States had attempted to maintain its standards of length and mass to be identical with those of the UK. However the fire at the Palace of Westminster in 1834, the resulting damage to Imperial fundamental standards, the lack of stability of the replacements, and the requirements for greater accuracy in measurement made the continuing alignment of the standards of the two countries increasingly difficult. Then in 1890, the US, as a signatory of the Metre Convention, received national prototype metric standards of length and mass. In 1893, it abandoned its national standards of the yard and the pound and adopted the following definitions:

One yard equals 3600/3937 of the metre
2.204 622 34 pounds avoirdupois equals one kilogram

The differences between US and Imperial measures of length and mass were a continuing problem for scientists and industry, and agreement was reached in 1959 between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK and the USA to establish uniformity in technical and scientific fields. These new definitions were agreed:

One yard equals 0.9144 metres
One pound avoirdupois equals 0.453 592 37 kilogram.

With the Weights and Measures Act 1963, the UK finally adopted these definitions for all purposes. Corresponding Imperial fundamental standards passed into history.

Of course, the Convention is not concerned only with length and mass, but has facilitated international agreement on standards for time, electricity, temperature, illumination and, for the atomic physicists, “substance”.

One question remains. When should we celebrate the benefits of a universal, simple, coherent system of measurement: on 20 May, the anniversary of the initial signing of the Convention, or on 10 October, a reminder of the link between the metric system and the number ”10″?

The Flora London Marathon gets under way this weekend.  According to the press, the distance is 26 miles 385 yards, though some papers give the distance as 26.2 miles (actually it should be 26.219 miles).  The official distance according to the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) rules is 42.195 km, though the rule book does recommend that the course be 0.1% longer than the official distance in order to accommodate any errors in measuring the course.  The course officials therefore add an additional 42 metres to the course (What is 0.1% of 26.219 miles, when measured in yards?).

Where did this odd measurement come from?  Contrary to urban legend, it had nothing to do with distance that the messenger Pheidippides ran from the Battle of Marathon to Athens in 490 BC.  In the 1896 and 1904 Olympics the marathon was run over a distance of 40 km.  In the 1908 Olympics (which was held in London), it was originally planned that the distance would be 25 miles, but the route was eventually fixed at 26 miles 385 yards (42.195 km). In 1921 this was chosen as the official distance of the marathon.

Rule 240.4 of the IAAF rulebook (Ref 1) states that “The distance in kilometres on the route shall be displayed to all athletes”  The rule book is of course silent about the use of miles.  The result is that in UK and American marathon events, the mile markers are very prominent, but kilometres are often only shown in multiples of five.  Of course, if kilometres were not shown, the course would not comply with IAAF rules, so any “world record” that was set would not be recognised.

One of the innovations of the marathon in recent years is to issue each runner with a transponder which they lace into their shoes.  As they cross the start line, multiples of five kilometers, the halfway point and the finish line their time is recorded.  Thus, in the mass starts runners who might have to wait five minutes before they cross the start line are not penalized.  Apart from checking that nobody cheated, another advantage of this system is that runners can analyse their performance after the race.  Of course, having your times at five kilometre intervals means that prominent mile markers are unnecessary, but that is what the UK press seem to like.  The real athletes, of course, only use the metric markers as these are guaranteed at every marathon course around the world.

References
Ref 1:
http://www.iaaf.org/mm/Document/Competitions/TechnicalArea/04/95/59/20090303014358_httppostedfile_CompetitionRules2009_printed_8986.pdf

Ref 2:
http://results-2008.london-marathon.co.uk/index.php?event_id=RAT&split=FINISHNET&Submit=show+results+%3E%3E&a=t

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The English-speaking world, over the centuries, has created a rich assortment of expressions, colloquialisms, metaphors and use of what I’ll call the vernacular that is simply not seen in other languages.  Many of these expressions and such might have crept into other languages, especially recently with the expanding use of the Internet, but their ‘ownership’ will always rest within the English language.

Much of the English-speaking world has now made the metric changeover, but there remain some who prefer the outdated and overly complicated ‘English’ or Imperial measurement system (actually, it’s not really a ’system’ at all, but that’s not what this article is about).  One main reason for not embracing the metric system (which truly is a system) is that it is considered to be sterile, overly technical, and lacking the familiar ‘vernacular’ found in Imperial.  In other words, not ‘user-friendly’.  In order for people to become more comfortable with using metric, we may have to accept some of this vernacular in its usage.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I’m a professional quantity surveyor, and I pride myself on ensuring that all my work, whether it is preparing a claim for delay and disruption, or preparing a bill of quantities, is absolutely spot-on in terms of correct metric (or SI) usage.  But in every day use?  I confess I tend to be a lot more casual in my use of metric, especially when talking to other people who may be anti-metric.

There are two main aspects of this:  1) use of colloquialisms and other ’short cuts’ and simplifications; and 2) retaining many of our Imperial expressions and metaphors, or at least finding new, equally friendly, metric substitutes.  Let’s look at each of these two aspects.

1) Colloquialisms and other short cuts

Ask an American how tall he is and how much he weighs, and he will likely answer something like “Five-ten and one-sixty-five”  Implicit in this is the fact that ‘five-ten’ refers to five-feet-and-ten-inches, and ‘one-sixty-five’ refers to 165 pounds.  The British may add the word ‘foot/feet’ (Five-foot-ten) and give their weight in stones (eleven-stone-eleven). We need to get metric usage on similar lines.

My Canadian citizenship card shows my height as 178 cm.  This could also be stated as 1.78 m, which is how citizens of continental Europe would describe their height.  Either way, it can be orally expressed as simply ‘one-seventy-eight’.  If the listener thinks in metres rather than centimetres, the decimal point is implicit ” we do this anyway in other areas, such as when looking at prices in, say, supermarkets: “Which brand of pork pie do you want, dear ” the shop’s own at one-ninety-nine, or the national brand at two-forty-three”  ‘Dear’ knows without explanation you mean £1.99 and £2.43, not £199.00 and £243.00.  Notwithstanding Australian expert Pat Naughtin’s comments to the contrary, I think if we tried to use millimetres in expressing our height to each other, that would kill metric in every day usage right from the start.  Sad, maybe but likely true.

Same for our weight.  It’s quite easy to simply say ’seventy-five’ (for 75 kg).  Some may prefer to add the word ‘kilos’ (ugh!) after it.  If the unit MUST be added, Canadians and Americans will likely say ‘kaygees’ (ugh!!!).  But saying ‘kilograms’, although technically correct, just sounds so, well, technical (and even a bit pompous).  A turn-off for too many people.

Out on the roads, Australians will express their speeds as so many ‘k’ (for km/h), while Canadians will use ‘clicks’ (I got done for speeding today, one hundred clicks in an eighty).  Context is of course everything without the reference to speeding, the rest of that sentence could mean anything or nothing.  Likewise with fuel consumption.  Canadians will simply express their vehicle’s consumption as simply, say, six-point-eight  meaning 6.8 L/100 km.

With apologies to Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Better to have converted and used a colloquialism, than never to have converted at all”.

2) Expressions and metaphors

There are a lot of anti-metric people who say we will lose our rich heritage of expressions and metaphors if we switch to metric.  Nonsense! Yes, some will have no direct metric equivalents, while others, if converted, will sound at best contrived, and at worst ridiculous.  And of course we’ve all encountered those who convert some expressions literally.  Much of the reason for this situation is that metric has really only a very few everyday units, whereas Imperial has many (e.g. for length/distance alone, Imperial has inch-feet-yard-mile, vs just the metre).  Let’s look at a few expressions.

“Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile”  I’ve seen Imperial zealots (and mischief-making journalists) translate that as “Give them 2.54 centimetres and they’ll take 1.62 kilometres”  A bit silly really.  It could be translated as “Give them a centimetre and they’ll take a kilometre”  Still sounds a bit contrived.  Why not leave the original expression as it was?  It IS only a metaphor.

Some Imperial expressions have no direct metric equivalent.  “Quart into a pint pot” – hmmm.  A litre into a millilitre pot?  Hardly.  Again, just leave that one as it is.

There are many other parts of our lives where Imperial units are used, even if the context is not strictly measurement.  We talk about “inching along (even towards becoming metric!)” I can hardly imagine talking about “centimetering” along!  How about “I can see for miles!”  Again, it simply doesn’t sound right to say: “I can see for kilometres!”  (And even airline frequent flyer programs around the world use miles.)

Another common expression, used not to describe an actual measurement, but merely to denote a large indeterminate liquid volume, is something on the lines of: “There’s gallons and gallons”  Once again, saying that: “There’s litres and litres” simply sounds wrong.  And let’s not forget: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”  “A gram of prevention is worth a kilogram of cure”?  I don’t think so! Although”A gram of prevention is worth a kilo of cure” might just work….)  When we see film clips on TV or at the movies, we always talk about “footage”, never about “meterage”

Our old expressions using Imperial units will be around for many generations to come, and I am sure that they will bring comfort to those struggling to convert to metric.  But I hope that if we make metric usage more user-friendly, even accepting the vernacular and our Imperial metaphors, then perhaps conversion for everyday use by everyday people will happen that much more easily and speedily.  We can always refine the usage later once people prefer metric to Imperial.

The incoming US President said, in his inauguration speech on 20 January, “For the world has changed, and we must change with it”. He probably did not have in mind the use of the vernacular, but we have to begin somewhere.

Our anecdote is provide by one of our regular readers, John Murray. He writes:

“I’ve recently helped in our village Christmas Street Market. We had a ‘Guess the weight of the Cake’ competition – you were allowed to guess in either lbs/oz or kg. Depressingly, out of 192 guesses only 12 were in metric, this in spite of the guessers being a mix of all ages, male and female. It was a real nightmare trying to work out which was the winner – converting all those nearest lbs-oz to kg.  In hindsight, I should have filled in the first few spaces on the card with my own metric guesses – and probably more might then have followed this ‘example’. Anyone had a similar experience? (Incidentally, my wife made the cake – which weighed 3.022 kg, and the winner guessed 6 lb 10 oz. We had a couple of 3.0 kg guesses – I hope I worked it out right! What a mess!)”

Now to the first of the two recent radio broadcasts providing views on metric. It is from John Foster’s early morning show on BBC Tees Radio on 17 December. The link below provides an edited version of the discussion between John, two studio guests and Robin Paice, Chair of the UK Metric Association. During the discussion, John asks Robin if UKMA’s campaign will be called off, now that the EU has dropped the timetable for completing the metric changeover. You can guess the answer.

Link

The second broadcast was on 19 December. This is a programme from a series produced jointly for the BBC and the Open University, under the title â??More or lessâ??. The series aims to improve numeracy, and this programme tackled, among other subjects, the day-to-day practicalities of having two systems of measurement side by side. The programme lasts for thirty minutes. To hear it, follow the link below and click on “Listen to the programme”.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/more_or_less/7790396.stm

The link also takes you to an article, written by the “More or less” team, entitled ”Imperial measures: why do they refuse to die?” Click on the picture of fruit at the bottom of this article to see some point scoring between an imperialist and a metricist(sic).

And finally, this first article has a link to a further article, written by a regular contributor to the UK measurement debate, which he describes as “The tidy-minded versus the bloody-minded”.

And if you have got this far, you deserve a mince pie.

Seasons Greetings to all our readers.

Please follow this link for a photo of what could be the UK’s oldest metric distance sign.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dgeezer/2699831318/sizes/l/in/set-72157606355604347/ 
  
It has to be admitted that this sign shows its mile value more predominantly, and “KILOs” is not the modern symbol for distance, but this little piece of history is 100 years old this week! The British and Irish Parliament had agreed some time before the 1908 Games that metric measures could be adopted for all purposes. But Metric Views believes that this Edwardian marathon marker is the oldest surviving sign in Britain showing kilometres.
 
Clearly, the organisers of the 1908 London Games had to face up to the issue of measurement systems – whether to use international or Imperial measures. It does seem rather extraordinary that, more than a century on, those organising the 2012 London Games still have a problem with signage.
 
This antique also shows that a sign of historical significance can be retained as an interesting local feature long after its practical life is over; modernising our road signs does not mean the end for genuinely historic posts and signs dotted throughout the UK. Let’s just hope that, as this historic marker enters its second century, it stays untouched by those who now object to the use of internationally accepted units on road signs in Britain.

The gram came into being as the mass of a cubic centimetre of liquid water (under normal terrestrial conditions of course) and for a time was adequate to meet the technological and scientific as well as ordinary commercial needs of the day. But even with the much more stable and precise reference used nowadays in the form of a metal prototype the difference between a litre of pure liquid water and the kilogram is immeasurable by most ordinary standards.

Much the same can be said of the origin of the metre. That 10 000 km quadrant of the Earth is still so close that it remains useful in visualising or estimating international distances.

In contrast, imperial measures have an obscure origin and a poor relationship to anything that perisists in the natural world. The pound weight owes its name to the fact that it equated to a pounds worth of coinage of a type that no longer exists. Linear measures, although they ostensibly relate to parts of the body, hardly constituted a meaningful reference even at the time of their invention, given the wide ranges of human stature.

By comparison with metric, imperial measures are abstract, ephemeral and archaic. Whatever the future may hold for systems of measurement one can at least say the Earth and water will remain meaningful to us for generations to come.

Qin Shihuangdi unified China by conquest in 221 BC. One of his first acts was to decree that only standard weights and measures were to be used throughout the empire. The bronze weight illustrated below is inscribed as follows: “In the 26th year [of his reign the king of Qin] united the princes of the [individual] states; the people enjoyed peace, and he was proclaimed emperor [huangdi]. He issued an edict that all weights are to be standardised. Where they are not uniform, or where there are any doubts, let them be standardised and classified.”

(Acknowledgements to the Trustees of the British Museum)

Also of interest is the measuring cup illustrated below. Its capacity is a “half dou”, which was the most popular size in use. Strangely enough, it is almost exactly equivalent to one litre. Obviously, this must be sheer coincidence, but it does give the lie to the British imperialists’ claim that the pint is “natural”, whereas the litre is not.

(Acknowledgements to the Trustees of the British Museum)

Here in Britain the first recorded attempt to standardise weights and measures can be found in Magna Carta (1215), but it was not until 1824 that imperial measures were standardised by the first Weights and Measures Act. Unfortunately, our current crop of politicians lack the perception or the political courage (or both) to acknowledge that a single system of weights and measures is a basic requirement of a modern society. Hence we have, to quote another Chinese leader*, “one country, two systems”.

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*the late Deng Xiaoping, referring to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region