Dear Martin,
No, there was no particular general mood or feeling in Australia at
that time for or against metric units or Imperial measures. One of the
driving forces – for politicians – was that we had in 1966 carried out
a very successful change from pounds, shilling, pence, and
so a pint would be 578 mL
Well we can't have that - because people would use it as an excuse for being
drunk - It was that extra 10 ml that did it, love, honest!
:-)
P.S. I did laugh at the 'new fangled' bit. And they say Americans don't do
humour/irony like the
I'll jot that down as another thing I learned on this here forum!
I know that there are words in Swiss-German that do not exist in german but I
must admit I never knew about the swiss-french numbering system being 'proper
decimal' as you say. That's mad! (ie the difference, not the
Perhaps I can add how Canada's metrication was promoted, at least initially,
back in the early/mid 1970s. There was (and to some extent still is) a great
antipathy towards the USA, especially in the area of what was called the USA's
cultural imperialism, something that Canada's prime minister
