You mention getting used to metric (like decimal) meaning people would not go
back to imperial (or decimal). I can't really agree with that as you can see
it in action at the school gate ;-) With money its different. I guess that
visualising money and visualising a measure are different too - ie a cm being
the width of your little finger and an inch being the width of your thumb at
the bone. I can't really say "£20 is like the weight of an egg" or something
like that. I think i can see where you are coming from though.
Also (considering this is a US forum) there are probably examples of the
attempt to metricate in the 70's.
You mention about carpet shops - we recently went through that for one of our
rooms and the calculations were very quick - I guess they are used to it. It's
a bit like the deli counter at the shops (even quoting imperial back as has
been mentioned here)
You mention about different countries not being decimal originally - I did not
know that so cheers for the info! I thought that most started decimal. I
suppose if you go right back there were probably different currencies and unit
divisions per community.
> Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:20:43 +0100
> From: tom.w...@tomwade.eu
> Subject: [USMA:47122] RE: Decimal currency & Metrication
> To: usma@colostate.edu
>
>
>
> > My own personal opinion is that currency and measures are so different
> > that I could never support LSD (or a return to it).
>
> Very few people would. My point is that once they've gotten used to
> metric units, very few people would want to go back to imperial either.
>
> > Unlike the everyday
> > usage of measures by ordinary people base-10 currency makes
> > computerisation of shopping, currency conversion, taxation, etc much
> > easier.
>
> But dealing with calculations in measurement is also made easier by
> metric units. Consider for example the hoops that carpet shops had to
> go through by measuring rooms in feet and inches, and then converting
> it to square yards to compute the price. So much easier if you use meters.
>
> > I would not think it would be seen as
> > Brussels interfering as most countries never even converted to a decimal
> > currency - it simply wasn't 'prequelled' if that makes sense.
>
> Not really. Before the Americans introduced decimal currency, pretty
> much all of Europe and most of the world had peculiar multiples of
> subunit to currency unit. It is only because the transition happened so
> long ago that decimal currency seems like it was always there (outside
> our two countries which were late joiners).
>
> The fact is that it is decimalization that is at the heart of both the
> currency reform and the metric system, and both demonstrate the
> superiority of a system in which unit relationships are in harmony with
> the base numbering system.
>
> Tom Wade
>
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