From this week's 'Times of India'
---------------------------------------------

"The United States, if it goes to war with Iraq, intends to use a new monster weapon whose explosive punch is equivalent to a small nuclear device...the weapon, still in the experimental stage, would be used during the first nights of the attack. The bomb is called MOAB ("Massive Ordnance Air Burst") and is the bigger version of the 15,000-pound 'Daisy Cutter', used in the Vietnam, Gulf and Afghanistan conflicts. MOAB is a 21,000-pound bomb..."


Metricists claim that India is '100% metric'

I have been to India, and I very regretfully tell you that it is pretty much metric. My guess is that since the figures were provided in American units, the media reported them as is, rather than converting. (Unlike the American media, which tends to give rough conversions)

Also, unlike sectgion of the UK press who insist on converting all units to Imperial units. For example, how was the magic figure of 93 miles arrived at in respect of Iraq's misilles. I suspect that the figure is really 150km and that the UK press converted the figure to miles for the beenfit of the British public

Indeed, it is officially 150 km.

"Also, unlike sectgion of the UK press who insist on converting all units to Imperial units. For example, how was the magic figure of 93 miles arrived at in respect of Iraq's misilles. I suspect that the figure is really 150km and that the UK press converted the figure to miles for the beenfit of the British public"

Ah Martin! You are surely staring to learn!

(P.S. Look up "insist" - wrong word me thinks)

I have noticed this as well - 93 miles indeed. The media promulgate this fact as though that were the language which those negotiating the thing use.

Doesn't the British media give 150 km in parenthesis after 93 miles? Here I have seen that at least once in a newspaper, the first time in that article it said "93 miles (150 kilometers)" and thereafter it said only "93 miles". By the way I have also seen it rounded to 90 miles.

"Doesn't the British media give 150 km in parenthesis after 93 miles?"

Not the majority of the media.

"By the way I have also seen it rounded to 90 miles."

That sounds all too typical.

yeah coz misiles are so accurate that you could run them the the 3rd last mile with no issues (eg wind etc)

Shouldn't round it to 90 should we? That's a gross underestimation!

(Jeesh)

"yeah coz misiles are so accurate that you could run them the the 3rd last mile with no issues (eg wind etc)

Shouldn't round it to 90 should we? That's a gross underestimation!"

Steveh, Bush won't leave a stone unturned to start his beloved war. In this context, every mile that a missile flies too far will be seized to make a start with his father's unfinished business in Iraq. Therefore, newspapers shouldn't be rounding the figure to 90 miles.

It should have been reported as 150km (93 miles). This tells the reader that the figure was motrivated by political rather than technical considerations (150 is a "nice round" figure, 93 is a "funny" figure). At the same time if the British reader is not aware of what 150km is, the figure in brackets will inform him.

If only one reading is quoted, then the original (ie the km) reading should be quoted and the otehj rleft out.

I fully agree with you, Martin.

Martin:
Deny the people the information they want.
Yeah! Good idea!

BTW - not touching the Iraq thing - too off topic and too opinionated out of scope.


Conrad:
Baaaaaah! Baaaaaaah!

Martin: "It should have been reported as 150km"

Why?

When Shoaib Akhtar bowled a delivery recorded at 153km/hr, should we know that or that it was 95mph?

If Tony Blair's and Gordon Brown's wives have babies compulsorily weighed on the hospital scales in kilos, should they have made their public announcements to the nation about their babies' weights in kilos instead of pounds?

If an Australian rugby player steps on the scales at 90kg and is 2m high, should we be told that, or that he weighs 14 stone and is 6' 6"?

If a climber falls around 300 metres down the north facee of the Eiger, should we be told that, or that he fell 1,000 feet?

If communicators want to communicate their information in the language (a) understood by and (b) preferred by the vast majority of British people, they will speak in the language of British units only, except where metric is commonly used e.g size of wine bottles, engine size.

To say these measurements 'should' be given in metric is the tyranny of the metric minority over the wishes of the silent Imperial majority

I would say yes, for the reason that I would like to know not only the best estimate of the figure in question, but also the uncertainty surrounding that figure.

For example, a few weeks ago it was reported that a British bus fell into a 33ft ravine in Spain. How close to 33ft was the ravine? If it was 32ft or 34ft would the reporting have been inaccurate? By saying 33ft the reported is implyig a fair degree of accuracy. I suspect, that the original report was a 10m ravine. Now the figure 10 is a nice round figure, so I could reasonable expect the true depth of the ravine to be between 8 and 12 metres (had a reported said 10 ft, I would, by the same token, have expected tghe true depth to be between 8 and 12 feet). It would have been far better for the report to have said that teh bus fell into a 10m(33ft) ravine. This would have allowed the reader to draw his own conclusions regarding the accuracy or otherwise of the figure.

Martin's last posting says: "The foot is more accurate than the metre". Q.E.D.

<<
Martin's last posting says: "The foot is more accurate than the metre". Q.E.D.
>>

I did not say anything of the sort!!!!!

What I was trying to say was that by converting from metres to feet, reporters give an illusion of greater accuracy, but they are in fact distorting the truth as they cannot improve on the accuracy of the original measurement or estimate unless they repeat the measurement or estiamte themselves.

Agree totally.

It's like Wales here!

I'm surrounded by sheep.

3ft sheep.

I thought sheep had 4 feet ?

They have foor feet tall fences

Three feet? Four feet? What's the difference? According to Martin you might as well say 'about a metre' and have done with it. He would say it's just as accurate

According to the "BOY'S MANUAL OF SEAMANSHIP AND GUNNERY" (Published c 1871), the foot varies considerably from country to country. Of the 19 countries listed (all with different sized feet), the largest is Sicily with a foot equal to 1.2591 English feet (0.3838m) while the snallest is the Russian foot equal to 0.8727 English feet (0.2660m).

Thus 4 feet will always be greater than one metre (4 Russian feet = 1.064 m), while three feet can be greater than or less than a metre, depending on the country of origin. (3 Sicilian feet = 1.151m).

The metre however is the same all over the world (even if the Americans spell it "meter").

So tell us what "foot" all international planes use all over the world international?

All right - the aircraft industry uses English feet.

You might have noticed that the reference I gave was dated 1871. By that time most of the countries were busy metricating in order to overcome the problems of different sized feet and by 1900 all of Europe (apart from Britain) was metric. The fact that feet are used in aviation is soley due to American dominance of that industry.

It has something to do with the UK as well - if you look back....

If you had fogotten, the fact that there were many feet in use over the world prior to 1900 is a little bit of a misnomer. Every English speaking country in the world used the same foot. Thus, if you would like to count the places in the world prior to 1900 with English spoken, the list gets rather long.

The British Isles
United States of America
Australia
New Zealand
Dominion of Canada
India
Hong Kong
Malaya
Palestine
Egypt
Nigeria
Kenya
Uganda
South Africa
Gibralter
All the Carribian claimed by Britain
All the Pacific claimed by the US
Phillipines

And I may have missed some places. So even though you say that most of the world was metric by 1900, this is not the case for all places speaking English, which as you can see by the list, is a lot acres.

And about 80% of the people in the countries that you listed changed from the imperial system to the metric system since 1900!

You are mixing "governments" with "people" again!

At the beginning of this thread, Bud wrote

<<
I have been to India, and I very regretfully tell you that it is pretty much metric.
>>

SInce India provides about 70% of the people in the list that MattS gave, I deduce that at least 70% of the people switched to metric. Moreover, since the majority of people in India are not of Anglo-Saxon origin, the resistance to accepting metric was probably no more that the resistance to accepting English measure in the first place.

Achem, India could not have gone metric until after 1946 and the partition of India and Pakistan. In fact, here is the following timetable:

The metric system originated in France where it was adopted by the National Assembly on April 7, 1795. Most nations in Europe and Central and South America adapted it for commercial use during the middle and last half of the 19th Century.

Following World War II, the Soviet Union and China made the use of metric units mandatory. India and Japan followed in the 1950s. Britain began a ten-year conversion to the metric system in 1965. South Africa completed the metric conversion by 1975. In 1969, New Zealand began an eight-year conversion to metric units, and in 1970 Australia and Canada announced their commitment to metricate.

Thus, for the first half of the 20th century, most of the *people* in my list still used customary measures of English speaking countries and their own traditional units of measure. Thus, they all measured in English feet. And it's funny to me that the English speaking nations on the above list (Britain, Canada, & Australia) still have not completely metricated no matter what their governments say. Oh, and then there's the US who took men to the moon on feet and pounds.

<<
Achem, India could not have gone metric until after 1946 and the partition of India and Pakistan. In fact, here is the following timetable:
>>

I recall that I wrote that these countries went metric after 1900 which is exactly what you said.

Asd regards metrication in South Africa, everything is offically metric and in practice metric is used fo ralmost everything except people's heights. There was a ten year period when the sale of any measuring device that was calibrated in Imperial units was banned (even if it had dual units). The upshot was that when I bought a kitchen measuring jug, it was in French ("rice", "beans", "fluids" etc) because there were no English-language equivalent.

I cannot comment about Australia and New Zealand, but I believe that it was the same in those countries as well.

Martin wrote: "As regards metrication in South Africa, everything is offically metric and in practice metric is used for almost everything except people's heights."

I did a survey tonight in a South African chatroom. I passed myself off as being South African and started talking with people (40) and asked for their weight and height.

- All of them stated their weight in kilos.
- 3/4 of them (30) gave their height in metres, 1/4 of them (10) in imperial.

Those 10 people who gave their height in imperial were all older than 35.

My appologies as I did not correctly read the word 'after' in front of 1900; however, I still find it interesting that a great majority of the world used English feet for measurements until approximately 1950. Furthermore, I also find it interesting that in the countries that are traditionally English speaking (Australia, New Zealand, Canada, The UK, and The US) the English foot stubbornly refuses to go away and is some cases (The US) the meter has been fought off by the commmon people and others with a stick.

<<
I still find it interesting that a great majority of the world used English feet for measurements until approximately 1950
>>

Frirstly, I presume that you mean "the English-speaking world". If you looked at a world map of 1950, you would have seen huge swathes of pink - the British Empire. Even though the dominions were nominally independent (as per the Statue of Westmisnter in 1931), they still looked to Britain for leadership in many matters, though they were slowly beginning to go their own ways (for example, my school sylabus in South Africa in the 1950's and 1960's was very much based on the British pre-war school sylabus with a few modifications to account for local conditions). The colonies were utterly dependent upon Britain for their development. It is of course noteworthy that the East African Railways ran on a 1m gauge, the gauge have been selected by a metrically-minded engineer in the latter days of Queen Victoria's reign.

After the Second World War, independence was granted to much of the Empire. Britian still gave the lead in technological development and when in 1965 Britain announched that she was to switch over to the metric system, the colonies and newly ndependent states followed suite. The British civil servants insisted on a "gold-plated" changeover program, while the rest of the COmmonwealth were porepared to cut a few corners to speed things up. Australia and South Africa, fo example, banned the sale of measuring devices that were calibrated in imperial units. By 1980, when the UK Metrication BOard was wound up by Mrs Thatcher, the South African Metrtication Board had already been wound up since its job had been copmpleted.

Matt, in short, although your observations about the first five decades of last century might be correct, you should look at the historic reasoons before commenting.

"Britian still gave the lead in technological development and when in 1965 Britain announched that she was to switch over to the metric system, the colonies and newly ndependent states followed suite. The British civil servants insisted on a "gold-plated" changeover program, while the rest of the COmmonwealth were porepared to cut a few corners to speed things up. Australia and South Africa, fo example, banned the sale of measuring devices that were calibrated in imperial units. By 1980, when the UK Metrication BOard was wound up by Mrs Thatcher, the South African Metrtication Board had already been wound up since its job had been copmpleted."

How pitiful have we been on this issue?

Martin,

While I agree with your analysis, I still have not gotten a response to my main point in that while the governments and in other cases the people in the English speaking world have claimed switched to metric, there are places where customary measures refuse to leave. Case in point are the examples from the Australia posts and I think by now it's common knowledge among most of us here that the UK is by no means completely metric and it will still be decades before it is. Lastly, I would say that the US is no closer to metrication than we were in 1975 when they tried to metricate us.

Those customary measures, while you metricators would like to believe it, have not and will not leave any time soon, and I would be willing to argue that they will never leave.

I still think that you have not fully grasped the stubborness of English speakers, and in particular the Americans. Americans have been told repeatedly that we will be switching to metric. When they try, there is so much public outcry and inconvenience, that they immediately switch back. They tried it with gasoline, and then with roadway distances, and numerous other things. There are only a few places where the metric measure has stuck (soda and alcohol, BTW 35mm film is not really 35mm but 1-3/8")

Please explain Martin, in your infinite wisdom, why if the metric measures are so much better and people claim to like them and use them, then why do the customary units still persist?

Matt,
there are a couple of reasons why customary units persist:

1. people are inherently conservative (people like their own habits and don't want to change them)
2. "why fix it, if it ain't broke ?" Imperial can just be as accurate as metric, so most people don't see why they should switch to the metric system
3. in case of the English-speaking world, it's obvious that the ENORMOUS influence of the US makes FULL metrication in Australia, the UK, South Africa,... impossible.

<<
Please explain Martin, in your infinite wisdom, why if the metric measures are so much better and people claim to like them and use them, then why do the customary units still persist?
>>

It is habit, fear of the unknown or plain stupidity. Let me give an example:

In the early 1980's one of my collegues had to give a lecture on the threat that the Soviet Union presented. I (with a number of other collegues) had to listen to a dry run of the talk. The talk was peppered with "facts". Among the facts were:

1. The Soviet Union was huge (5000 miles coast to coast).

2. The Soviet Union had a huge standing army - 2,000,000 men under arms

3. There were sufficient men in the army for them to stand shoulder to shoulder around the whole of the Sovie Union's borders.

It did a quick calculation:

a) 5000 miles = 8000 km
b) 1000m = 1km
c) Soviet Union is 8,000,000 m coast to coast
d) If 2,000,000 men wer eplaced shoulder to shoulder across the SOviet Union, they would be 4m apart (which is hardly shoulder to shoulder).

Since the speaker claimed that they stand shoulder to shoulder right around the Soviet Union,. it was clear that he was mis-informed.

The biggest problem that I had was convincing the meeting to think in metric - thereafter things were easy.

Now would you class the reluctnace of the meeting to think in metric as "not being in the habit of using metric units", "fear of the unknown" or "plain stupidity in that they did not question the speaker's calculations"

Martin

Whilst you have concentrated on converting miles into kilometres, you seem to have missed the more obvious and main point of the 'shoulder-to-shoulder' claim [see your posting], which is the patently daft claim that the 2,000,000 Soviet soldiers could have stood soldier to soldier "across the entire length of the Soviet Union's borders" (no doubt much more than 5,000 miles!).

In actual fact, without doing all those unnecessary conversions to metric, it's quite easy to quickly calculate that 2 million soldiers over 5,000 miles (i.e. from end to end of the Soviet Union) is 400 per mile and so one soldier would cover just over 4 yards.

All right Tony, try this one:

Some years ago an electrical engineer friend and I were discussing a problem which meant that we needed to estimate the diameter of a sphere which contained 2000 ton[ne]s of water. (Metric or long tons - it made little difference in this case).

My logic went:

2000 tonnes of water = 2000 m^3 of water.
Work in units of Dm, so what size sphere has a volume of 2Dm^3 (1000 m^3 = 1Dm).

V = 4*pi*r^3/3

Assuming that pi equals 3 (I was doing this calculation mentally), and setting V = 2, I got

0.5 = r^3.

SOlving r = 0.8 approx.

The sphere therefore has a radius of 0.8Dm or 8m.


When I announced the answer, my friend was trying to perform the following calculations mentally

V (in ft^3) = mass (in tons) * 2240 / 62.5. He had still not converted the mass of water to a volume.

Conrad.
Why do you keep up this absurd stuff about south africans and ozzies etc.

You need to face some facts. In N.London where I work there are loads of young "southern hemispherials". Some have been here a few monts and some have been here years.

They have no problem visualising "miles" and all quote their height in feet (whenever the need arises).

In fact one of them (about 25) walked past me from the NT team saying (to a mobile phone) "Oh, it's about 20feet long by - lets see - 8 feet wide". No big panic about the fact that it was "imperial" - infact if you were here no doubt you'd be telling him he should be using metric! (to a typical oz rebuttal involving a word starting with "w")

Listen to me - they would *not* say they were "knee deep in one metre of water" - they would *always* say "I was knee deep in 3' of water" - EVEN THOUGH they are both about the same they choose the more numerous "3" to a real basic "1" - try to fathom out why?!?!?

Indeed the avg southern hemisphereal occasionally says a metric word more than us Brits (usually weight related) - BIG DEAL.

Walking into a room full of south africans pretending to be one is not very scientific and I suspect very "loaded"!

And to say that the US is the reason why kids in the UK still speak "imperial" had me rolling on the floor! Perhaps they were having too many "american quarter pounders"?? LOL!!!

Conrad - this place would be a much more boring place without your little stories an anecdotes , for which I am trully gratefull!

<<
You need to face some facts. In N.London where I work there are loads of young "southern hemispherials". Some have been here a few monts and some have been here years.

They have no problem visualising "miles" and all quote their height in feet (whenever the need arises).
>>

One of the big arguments for the *very* slow progress of metrication in the UK is that Govt. want to be sure that everybody understands metric units before they appear (espl. the Dept. for Transport). If the "southern hemispherials" can pick up miles quickly, why can't the British pick up kilometres just as quickly (or is Sir Humphrey and his cohorts understimating the intelligence of the average Brit).

Sorry - I didn't mean "pick up miles" - they already know it.

On second check - I didn't say "pick up" - you did, Martin.

All right then, the average Brit should have no trouble visualising kilometres.

All cars sold in South Africa after about 1973 have speedometers in km/h only. All distances are in km only. Thus anybody born in 1973 in South Africa and who lived in South Africa all their lives would have to have started driving a car that was 18 years old if they were to have had any exposure to miles or mph.

On the other hand, all new British cars have had dual unit speedometers. Thus the average British driver should have had more exposure to km and km/h that the average South African has had to miles and mph.

Steve, by your own admission they have no trouble visulaising miles, so what is wrong with the Brit who has never crossed the Channel?

Most Brits do the "two thirds" thing - very easy to do.

How come you are so anti-imperial measures?

Steve:

1. Some 30 years ago (when the metric system was first introduced into SOuth Africa), I made an effort to learn it and I am tired of being regarded as "smart-*rsed" whenever I use it.

2. My work takes me to a number of different technological disciplines and I am required to calculate and in some cases define or at least verify the formulae themselves. Metric scores every time.

3. I believe that the British Government are quite happy to keep the Imperial system for the peasants (oops, sorry man-in-the-street) so that they can publish official reports using the metric system and the man-in-the-street will ignore such reports because they contain metric units.

So you are against imperial measures on purely emotional and/or psychiatric reasons then - fair enough.

Do you have high blood pressure?

No Steve,

based on experience of using both the metric and imperial systems in many different countries and in
many different environments - domestic, industrial and scientific and the ability to put aside the "not invented here" mentality that besets so many of the pro-imperial measurement lobby.

So Newton, whos measures ended up in the SI system, didn't invent it here.

You appear more short sighted than I first made out.

How about "freedom of speech" - fancy curtailing that? What's your position?

"Banning inches from rulers" you say (in S.A.)

The taliban did a lot of banning on ideological grounds.

Nice comparison, me thinks!

Steve,

I know that the South African Security Police had a [thin] file on me. I also knew a number of people who received banning orders or who were deported from South Africa in the late 1960's, and early 1970's. These people were concerned with freedom of speech. I never once heard complaints from any of those quarters. In fact, I have heard some anti-Apartheid activists say that the one thing the SOuth African Government got right in the 1970's was the metrication policy.

The only complaints that I heard about the metrication policy were that certain government departments (Or rather individuals in those departments) would not accept building plans that were in metric units. (They subsequently received "motivation" from the higehr echelons of government).

"In fact, I have heard some anti-Apartheid activists say that the one thing the SOuth African Government got right in the 1970's was the metrication policy."

So after the brutal segregations, violence on all sides, torture, illegal imprisonment, horror stories etc etc they thought "at least we have got metric words denoting measurements in stead of imperial ones"?
Yeah right! And as the prisoners of World War Two were released from their camps in Germany the Americans and British exclaimed that "we were tortured daily but at least they use metres!"

I'm looking for even more outrageous "depths" Martin- keep 'em coming.

"(They subsequently received "motivation" from the higehr echelons of government). "

Just like you see iraqi kids and women "celebrating" their leader on Iraqi state television.

You can be truly scarey sometimes, and you probably don't even know it!

Very sinister - you should get together with Ross.

Maybe you know someone who can force me into using metric against my will - oh hang on - let me martinize that -

Maybe you know an influential person who could "encourage" me to use modern efficient measures.

[shudder]

It's amazing how nasty (nazi) just adding doublequotes to a word can become!

(unless you are denoting "inches", of course......)

Some years ago I saw a virulant anti-Apartheid film set in the mid 1970's depicting a (fictitious) black political leader who had escaped(?) been released(?) from jail who met one of his comrades who had spent his time in one of the guerilla movements. In the course of their discussions, the guerilla made the comment "I have converted to metric". The ex-prisoner was still working in feet and inches.

The tone of the film also showed how the Afrikaans language was hated.

My experience of South Africa in the 1970's was that everybody, black and white, pro and anti-Apartheid regarded metrication as a step in the right direction and most people saw the banning of rulers with inches on them as a necessary evil. Once the metrication board was disbanded with its job complete, the ban was no longer enforced, but by then almosgt everybody had become used to using metric units.

....creepy stuff

<<
And as the prisoners of World War Two were released from their camps in Germany the Americans and British exclaimed that "we were tortured daily but at least they use metres!"
>>

If you wish to compare Apartheid South Africa with Nazi Germany, then the SOuth African metrication program should be compared with the German Volkswagen program, not with the forced labour camps.

You need to re-read *your* posts to re-see where I'm coming from !