until I was 10 I lived in South Africa. I'm now 23 and I can only very partially think in "old money". I can imagine what a foot is, but ask me how many pounds there are in a stone and I'm lost. To me a stone is a small lump of rock. I can visualise a pint but what about a gallon? How many gallons of paint are required to paint a wall 14 yards 2 feet and 7 inches long by 9 yards 5 inches high if a fluid ounce covers 3 square feet? The system is hideously complex for such calculations.
South Africa abolished the South African Pound, made up of shillings and pence, and replaced it with the Rand of 100 cents in 1961. Before 1967 the metric system was hardly used in SA but in that year it was made compulsory. All packaging was marked in SI units and the old units were not permitted in the media to remove the crutch that dual use would provide for imperial. The changeover went exceptionally well and in 1977 the ban on units other than metric ones was lifted. No one went back to the old system. As far as I know Australia and New Zealand have followed the same path more or less and all without anything to do with Brussels.
It is sad to see people actually promoting ignorance and obscurantism like this. I know there is sometimes a hostility to the unfamiliar and even a willful refusal to understand the new, but this should not be encouraged.
Ed, you are entitled to your preferences. So is everyone else. If the government of South Africa forced metric down the country's throat by banning (even temporarily) the use of other measurements, then obviously people will have no choice but to use metric, and will therefore soon prefer it.
Martin - we have these same old, almost "autogenerated" junk postings from time to time.
You need not expect a response.
Hmmm, perhaps I'll go and search out a metric type website and post nonsense under "Imperial Rules" explaining stuff about time being imperial, how most people speak it and why metric is a hated french system of units no-one wants.
Then again, perhaps not.
Andy (no login)
Re: SI rules OK
August 24 2005, 10:07 AM
I don't see why that is a "junk posting" Steve. Its just someone giving their opinion.
Bud
Ed, you are entitled to your preferences. So is everyone else. If the government of South Africa forced metric down the country's throat by banning (even temporarily) the use of other measurements, then obviously people will have no choice but to use metric, and will therefore soon prefer it.
metre
If it does not perturb you to see US children, teachers, industry, doctors, nurses and god knows who else, wasting time and money on learning, teaching and working with cumbersome units to have it your way, so be it. In every other country, your attitude would be classified as extremely selfish.
Then its also intereting that I mocked the idea of filling up with gallons as well as litres?
Tedium absorbed then.
JohnS-MI (no login)
Re: SI rules OK
August 24 2005, 6:58 PM
Ed wrote
<<The changeover went exceptionally well and in 1977 the ban on units other than metric ones was lifted. No one went back to the old system. >>
Bud wrote
<<If the government of South Africa forced metric down the country's throat by banning (even temporarily) the use of other measurements, then obviously people will have no choice but to use metric, and will therefore soon prefer it.>>
OK, the trial was compulsary, but after giving it a fair trial, they apparently really preferred it, and nobody tried to go back. In the UK and the US, people are still fighting it 30 years later, and at least the obstinate people either are unable or refuse to understand it.
If you forced people who knew metric to use Imperial (or Customary) for ten years, how many people would prefer to continue using it, how many would want to go back to metric?
Hallo Martin, bly te kenne. Ek praat 'n bietjie Afrikaans.
My mother is English and my father is an English-speaking South African, he can speak Afrikaans well but did not do so at home so I only learned a bit at school.
re (Ed): "It is sad to see people actually promoting ignorance and obscurantism like this. I know there is sometimes a hostility to the unfamiliar and even a willful refusal to understand the new, but this should not be encouraged".
The fact is the metric system is more rational than the imperial system. As we use a decimal based counting system it is sensible to use a compatible system of units.
Perhaps the imperial die-hards should abandon the decimal counting system in favour of the original Roman one? After all, it was the damned Arabs who invented our system of counting, hence Arabic numerals as opposed to Roman. Or maybe Roman numerals should be used for 'everyday' use and Arabic numerals reserved for scientists and the like?
Let's have signs on motorways giving the speed limit as LXX miles per hour. If I travel for VII hours at LXVIII miles per hour how far have I gone?
How about if a person was born in AD MCMLVII how old was he in AD MMIII?
Yes, I inadvertantly quoted Lenin because as we all know the metric system is a dastardly atheistic communist plot and a direct assault on God and Liberty.
"The fact is the metric system is more rational than the imperial system. As we use a decimal based counting system it is sensible to use a compatible system of units."
The pre-norman British also used a decimal measuring system, in which the base unit called WAND was only 7 mm different from the present metre.
From Wikipedia article on the Wand (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wand):
Metrology
The wand is also a pre-Norman unit of length used in the British Isles equal to approximately the modern metre, apparently dating from an early use as a yardstick (originally as a generic term). The 'wand' survived for a time under the Normans. Then when the yard was established, the wand came to be known as the 'yard and the hand', and then disappeared, either slowly or by being banned by law.
The old English unit of 1007 millimetres was called a 'wand', and although the 'yard' was created to replace the wand the wand was still used for some centuries because of its convenience as part of an old English decimal system that included:
10 digits (base of long finger) about 20 millimetres
10 digits = 1 small span (span of thumb and forefinger) 200 millimetres
10 small spans = 1 armstretch (1 fathom from finger tip to finger tip) about 2 metres
10 fathoms = 1 chain about 20 metres
10 chains = 1 furlong about 200 metres
10 furlongs = 1 thus-hund of about 2000 metres
The wand that has survived today as part of folklore may in fact be a rendition of the ancient British length unit. Thus a true wand would be a metre in length and not 30 cm.
Notice how the Norman invaders forced the wand out of existence by having it banned and replaced by the yard. What the French Revolutionaries really did was restore the old wand in the form of the metre. Thus, the imperial measures are derived from the units of the invading French, whose later generations recognized their error and reverted, by creating the metre, to a more ancient and better system.
So in truth, the BWMA and its supporters are not supporting a British System and opposing a French one, they are supporting a French System and opposing a British one.
Tony Bennett (no login)
Norse Men
August 24 2005, 10:48 PM
Daniel Johnson's's piece is nonsense from beginning to end, of course, but I snorted at this bit: "imperial measures are derived from the units of the invading French..."
RERPLY: Er, they were *Normans*, or 'Norse-Men' and originated from, er, Scandinavia.
They came from North-West France before coming to England. They may have originated in Scandinavia, but they were in France long enough to absorb French measurements. Even the pre-imperial unit organizations such as Troy and avoirdupois is French.
Face it you are fighting to maintain a non-British French collection of units.
Bud (no login)
Re: SI rules OK
August 25 2005, 12:23 AM
<<
OK, the trial was compulsary, but after giving it a fair trial, they apparently really preferred it, and nobody tried to go back. In the UK and the US, people are still fighting it 30 years later, and at least the obstinate people either are unable or refuse to understand it.
If you forced people who knew metric to use Imperial (or Customary) for ten years, how many people would prefer to continue using it, how many would want to go back to metric?
>>
John, we had a good debate on this topic a while before you joined in, but I believe the gist of my message was that people will ALWAYS prefer whatever they are used to. If you force people to abandon what they are used to and use something else, then within a short time they will prefer it, regardless of complexity. If any country in the world were to prohibit the use of metric for ten years and require imperial only, then the people would most likely not revert back automatically. People are creatures of habit; they prefer whatever they are used to.
Ed (no login)
Re: SI rules OK
August 25 2005, 1:17 PM
>John, we had a good debate on this topic a while before you joined in, but I believe the gist of my message was that people will ALWAYS prefer whatever they are used to. If you force people to abandon what they are used to and use something else, then within a short time they will prefer it, regardless of complexity. If any country in the world were to prohibit the use of metric for ten years and require imperial only, then the people would most likely not revert back automatically. People are creatures of habit; they prefer whatever they are used to.<
This is exactly why the present 'dual use' system must be ended and only metric used. Otherwise people, being creatures of habit, will largely stick to the familiar even if it is long obsolete.
After all, where is the incentive for someone used to imperial to learn metric if he/she can read the imperial equivalent on every bit of packaging etc? Cildren learn metric only at school, but then are confronted by the obsolete system on road signs, packaging and in the populist hysterical media.
Re: SI rules OK August 25 2005, 12:23 AM
Bud
John, we had a good debate on this topic a while before you joined in, but I believe the gist of my message was that people will ALWAYS prefer whatever they are used to.
metre
Back to the future.
The fundamental question you conveniently never answer is why do only imperial countries experience ongoing attempts to metricate? Since you insist that only governments clamour for change to metric, why are there no metric governments clamouring for imperial? I could well imagine Mexico deciding to go USC to simplify trade with its rich neighbour, but no, it is America that adopts metric. While habit plays a role in almost anything we do over time, there is a much better reason why metric dominates the world. It simply is the better system by km. It would be impossible IMHO to force established metric users to revert to imperial without incurring massive civil disobedience because nobody using metric measurements would voluntarily go back to medieval units.
As I said many times before, America had its chance after 1945 to make USC the predominant global measuring system and failed dismally when metric countries voted against it as preferred measurement for the UN. To get unanimity on anything in this world is nigh impossibly except when clear and tangible advantages decide the vote.
Funny isn't it that the same people that complain that no-one would ever go back to imperial from metric also complain that imperial is used firsthand in a 'metric' country (namely the UK)!