Dear Peter, I have just read and enjoyed your article, "Taking the measure of metric" that I read at http://pressrepublican.com/0205_columns/x879865848/Taking-the-measure-of-metric
As I read a few thoughts came to my mind: Snow varies a lot in its density but, as a rule of thumb, some meteorologists say that 1 centimetre of snow is approximately equivalent to 1 millimetre of rain. Using the second figure you know that 1 millimetre of rain on 1 square metre of roof will put 1 litre of water into a rainwater tank. At our house I have 200 square metres of roof so (say) 8 millimetres of rain gives us 1600 litres of water in our tank. You wrote: Oddly enough, here we are well into the 21st century, and you have a nation born of revolution against the British monarchy using the imperial system, and a country still constitutionally clinging to Mother England measuring stuff with a system the arose out of the French Revolution. This is particularly interesting to me because my research tells me that these ideas are repeated over and over again until the point where they are almost universally believed. I think the truth is that the original idea of a "universal measure" that became the metric system was invented in England by Bishop John Wilkins in 1668. See http://www.metricationmatters.com/who-invented-the-metric-system.html However, nothing came of Wilkins' invention until it was rediscovered by Thomas Jefferson who incorporated the decimal ideas firstly into his work as a surveyor; secondly into the decimal currency of the USA (helped by Benjamin Franklin and George Washington); thirdly into a 1790 report to Congress advocating a complete decimal measurement system for the USA; and fourthly, when Jefferson was ambassador to France in the late 1780s, as a component of the French "decimal metric system" that was made legal in France in 1795. Of the components of the "decimal metric system": the "decimal" component was from the USA; the "metric" part was from France; and the "system" design came from Bishop Wilkins in England. See http://metricationmatters.com/docs/USAMetricSystemHistory.pdf You write about: … a nation fond of its folksy feet, pounds and gallons into a sleek and precise European model of metres and litres. It is my experience that the people who resist the metric system are not doing so because they want to protect the old pre-metric measures. Truth be known they barely understood them either. What they are trying to protect are the old words and their use as a jargon to introduce newbies into their particular activities. As an example, the Australian horse racing industry was one of the first to upgrade to the metric system in 1972. Horse races have been completely metric for 38 years but the trainers, jockeys, and gamblers simply shifted the word, furlong, to mean 200 metres and the word, mile, to mean 1600 metres. The key is language preservation not measurement retention. You can see this in the UK and in the USA particularly in the UK where they almost completed their metrication upgrade when Margaret Thatcher felt an election coming on. Her response was to "save the mile and the pint for Britain", which she did by insisting that road signs could have miles and that pub pints could be ordered in pints. The net result is that road engineers build roads in metric then erect signs marked in miles; publicans serve beer in pint glasses if filled to the brim, but accept the fact that they only need 500 millilitres of beer with the rest as froth. The mile and the pint are, of course officially defined in the UK as metric units (1.609 344 kilometres = 1 mile and 568.3 millilitres = 1 pint) Thanks again for your article. I was unaware of the politics in Canada at that time so you have helped plug a gap in my knowledge. Finally, just for fun, I don't think it is possible to go for a day in either the UK or the USA without using the metric system. Start at http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/DontUseMetric.pdf and see how long you last. Cheers, Pat Naughtin LCAMS Author of the ebook, Metrication Leaders Guide, see http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html Hear Pat speak at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lshRAPvPZY PO Box 305 Belmont 3216, Geelong, Australia Phone: 61 3 5241 2008 Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA. Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST, and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com for more metrication information, contact Pat at pat.naugh...@metricationmatters.com or to get the free 'Metrication matters' newsletter go to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter to subscribe.
