If the metric system is not suitable for everyday use, why does half of the world use it everyday?

I'm from Belgium and after France, we've been the second country to adopt the metric system. If we go to the supermarket, we don't buy 1000 grammes of oranges, but we ask for 1 kilogramme of oranges. And if we want less, we ask for e.g. 0.6 kilogramme of oranges.

What's the problem? The argument that the SI system is not suitable for everyday use is a false one. The truth about the whole thing is that you just don't want to give up your imperial system (something I can understand) and that's the only reason.

All other reasons like "the SI system is not practical", "the metric system is even more outdated than the imperial system", "the definition has changed 5 times or more", "the Boeing 747 was built in imperial units"... Those reasons do not prove the superiority of the imperial system. It's as easy to build an airplane in metric units as in imperial units. Both systems are equal, but the metric system has the advantage of being more logical. That's all.

Excuse me, but where has this innundation of people come from (well, two)who don't really seem to be contributing?

Imperial units are superior when they are what people want to use.
SI units are superior when they are what people want to use.
Other metric units are superior when they are what people want to use.
Other non-metric units are superior when they are what people want to use.

The everyday use of metric units across much of the globe proves little either way - they are in fact used because people are forced to use them, not because they want to. Whether or not they would continue to use them if they were free to do otherwise could only be demonstrated by releasing them from state compulsion.

SI is NOT however the system (metric or otherwise) in ordinary everyday use anywhere on the planet - many non-SI units and usages creep in everywhere, such as years, days, hours, minutes, km/h, degrees, minutes, seconds of angle or latitude and longitude and, strictly, hectares, litres and Celsius temperatures. Properly speaking, even centimetres oughtn't to be used in SI - only units related by factors of 10**3, like millimetres and kilometres. SI isn't used with full consistency by more than a tiny minority of scientists (which minority may in fact be an empty set - I've never met any of them myself). And only fanatics would insist that it ought to be.

>they are in fact used because people are forced to
>use them, not because they want to

After having used them for centuries on the continent, there is no difference between "being forced to" and "wanting to", meaning you love what you're supposed to do.
That's exactly the same situation in the UK, you now love what you were forced to do (before metrication, UK traders didn't have the choice to sell in anything else than imperial either).

>Properly speaking, even centimetres oughtn't to be
>used in SI - only units related by factors of 10**3,
>like millimetres and kilometres

Sorry, but "centi" is a valid SI prefix. Look at

http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/prefixes.html

Ralf

Like most metric fanatics you seem incapable of comprehending the fundamental moral and practical differences between choosing and being coerced. Where someone is being coerced you cannot always tell whether he would continue to act the same way if he were free, but it is in general highly improbable.

I would disapprove of forcing people to use imperial units as I disapprove of forcing them to use metric; but although there have been miscellaneous weights and measures regulations throughout the history of the UK it is sheer falsehood to pretend that traders in the UK were prevented from using metric. I myself as a child bought chemicals in grams and millilitres as well as ounces and fluid ounces, and rope in metres as well as feet or fathoms.

As for the "centi-" prefix, it is used almost exclusively for the centimetre, which persists, contrary to the SI philosophy of using as multiples only powers of ten divisible by three, purely out of tradition, as a reluctantly permitted hangover from the earlier cgs systems. The litre and hectare are similarly deprecated hangovers.

>I would disapprove of forcing people to use imperial
>units as I disapprove of forcing them to use metric;
>but although there have been miscellaneous weights
>and measures regulations throughout the history of
>the UK it is sheer falsehood to pretend that traders
>in the UK were prevented from using metric

Hmm, as I recall as a trader you need certified scales from the Trade Organization, these scales will of course conform to the regulations. Nowadays in metric, before that in imperial. If you use an imperial scale nowadays, it can't be a certified one and thus you're not allowed to use it. Ergo: You don't have the freedom to choose.

If you're talking about the general public, in continental Europe we have as much freedom to choose as you do in the UK. If my local greengrocer knows what I mean by a "blob", I can buy a Blob of apples from him, but he still has to weigh it in metric.

Concerning your claim about the "centi"-prefix:
Did you actually look at the link from my posting ?
You may notice then that
a) "centi" is officially part of the SI system, its popularity or amount of usage has nothing to do with that
b) there are things like "centi" (-2),"deci" (-1), "deca" (1) and "hecto" (2). The divisibility by three holds only for ones outside that [-2,2] range.
The point for these is that you want more "accuracy" around 0, ie more divisions around that value.

Ralf

{That's exactly the same situation in the UK, you now love what you were forced to do (before metrication, UK traders didn't have the choice to sell in anything else than imperial either).}

Selling in metric has been legal in the U.K. since the 1890's (1866 in the U.S.).

What on earth is a "blob" ?

Nothing prevented traders from pricing, measuring or selling goods in metric units, though I believe there was a requirement for certain traders, like butchers and greengrocers, to sell using properly calibrated scales or balances visible to the customers. I'm not sure whether those scales had to display pounds and ounces (I think they might have done) but they certainly weren't barred from displaying kilograms too (I remember that many of them did - a trivial matter before the days of electronic displays - though I never heard of anyone asking for the metric amounts).

Oakes, Eddon & Co sold dry chemicals in plastic tubs of 2 and 5 fl.oz, not measured, just filled up, and loose in amounts like 50g (measured on a chemical balance with no imperial units in sight). Liquid reagents mostly came in 100ml or 200ml plastic or 500ml or 1000ml glass bottles, though some, like phenolphthalein, came in little 1 fl.oz plastic bottles designed to let you squeeze out individual drops. Glassware was mostly - though not exclusively - in ml. Unlike today, there was never any question of the state (still less any assembly of foreign states) forcing people to use any single system.

If you knew something of the history and rationale of SI you'd know that the small multiples and submultiples da,h,d,c were adopted into SI only reluctantly, because the original intention was to stick to engineering notation (that is, powers of ten divisible by three); like the litre, are, and hectare, they spoil the logical purity of SI; they break the system. The reason they are still there, albeit deprecated (which, by the way, is the technical term), is human pigheadedness, the unwillingness to abandon convenient usages just because they're not "logical".

Maybe he meant 'blob' as in 'doo-dah', that is, he can use any measurment system in the world in shops so longs as the man serving him knows what he is going on about, but it will have to be measured out and sold in metric. I am almost certain that is what he meant :)

More commonly known as a widget.

Yardstick

Re: You all beat about the bush May 27 2002, 2:31 AM
Wrote:

Selling in metric has been legal in the U.K. since the 1890's (1866 in the U.S.).

(SIGH)

The misleading statements persist!! Yes, it has been legal to sell in metric but for many years, it was illegal to WEIGH in metric!!

Traders CAN sell in pounds and ounces if they want to!!

All that has changed is that the scales used have to be metric or dual-purpose!!

Strangely, for many years, nobody, least of all the BWMA ever complained about traders having to weigh in imperial, but not metric!! Nobody seemed to care about this apparent affront to our freedom of choice!!

Now the situation is reversed, it becomes a matter of national importance!!

Hypocrisy is a wonderful thing, isn't it??

Regards,

Steve.
stevo.davis@btinternet.com

Exactly when and in what circumstances do you claim that it was illegal to weigh in metric units? Can you give a reference to the relevant Acts of Parliament? I know for a fact that during my childhood some goods were weighed in metric without interference from politicians or the courts, as I detailed above.

To anyone who understands and uses the English language the way English people do (and almost certainly as the Welsh, Scots, Irish, American, Canadian, Australian, etc. do too) selling goods in British units implies being free to price, weigh and give receipts in those units as well. This is now forbidden.

Under a strict interpretation of the law I am not even permitted to ASK for imperial measures of goods, since to do so would be to incite traders to break the law. Furthermore, if I do so ask, the trader is legally obligated to refuse to sell what I ask for, but may only OFFER to sell me the metric equivalent instead.

(This assumes that the 1985 Act permitting imperial is overridden by the 1994 and later regulations under the 1972 Act, as the Court of Appeal has ruled in the Metric Martyrs case.)

QUOTE: "Traders CAN sell in pounds and ounces if they want to!!"

No, they can't. They may sell only in metric (according to the doubtful vires of the 1994 regulations).

Customer: "I want a pound of bananas"

[Trader goes to scale, weighs 453 grams of bananas, wraps it up]

Trader: "Here's your pound of bananas"

That's legal, right ?

Ralf

Oi! Give me my extra gram you metric mugger!

No. It's not legal. It's fraud. He has to say something like: "It's a bit under half a kilo, is that all right, love? I'm not allowed to sell pounds anymore".

It's not fraud unless the consumer has been sold short-measure.

It is, however, illegal to sell in lb/oz because the government made it so (subject to the 1985 Act issue).

That's exactly what I mean.
The customer can ask in imperial, the trader can display imperial prices (as long as he displays the metric one as well) and the trader can say (!) the amount of imperial he's selling.

Everything metric is actually happening behind the curtain, i.e. the scales are metric, he's weighing the metric equivalent to what the customer asked for in imperial, and the metric amount will appear on the bill.

Ergo: For the customer, the only metric thing happening is on his/her bill, right ?

So what is the fuss about ?

Ralf

BWMA: In Ralf's example, it WAS fraud (the customer received short measure, admittedly only to the tune of 1g). The customer may also be defrauded, even if he receives full measure, if he asked for the goods to be weighed in imperial but the trader covertly weighed in metric instead (the manner in which a contract is fulfilled can be as much a part of the contract as the actual goods supplied).

Ralf: One of the features of earlier weights and measures legislation was - I think - that the transaction had to be open and above board, with the customer being able to see the weighing out and check its accuracy himself. Doing it "behind a curtain" would have been illegal (I realise that you didn't mean this literally, but forcing any part of the transaction to be done in metric breaches that principle of transparency).

Hmm, that relies on the assumption that a "pound" and "454 grams" are something different. I would expect the legal interpretation of asking for a "pound" is that it's nothing but a synonym for "454 grams", as much as a "pound" in continental Europe is a synonym for "500 grams".

The trader of course doesn't have the choice of weighing the goods in imperial since he has to have metric scales to make a lawful transaction.

Ralf

Er ... no ... you actually said that the trader weighed out 453g, which is less than a pound. Or was that a typo? Or are you responding to a different point here?

That was pretty much a typo. I didn't know exactly how much a pound is in grams, so I looked it up and just stripped off the trailing digits after the decimal point.

Ralf

I cannot really comment on the particular legal technicaalities, but all I can do is talk in terms of my everyday expeience: If I try to buy something in Imperila because I understand Imperial, quite often I cannot because it is packaged in metric and in measurements that are equivelent to any wjole or convenient Imperial measure (nor, might I add, are they packaged in a convenient metric size, as there is no such thing).

If I buy cheese from the supermarket, sure, I can *say* 8 ounces of cheese or a pound or however much I fancy, but quite often I get a funny look from the people serving me, and quite often they will say to me that they have been told not to give it to me in Imperial, and that they're sorry.

Etc etc.

The point is that life is made often relatively difficult in many circumstances if I wish to use Imperila, because wherever I go it is not allowed. Thankfully most walks of British life still are in Imperial (Road signs et al), but to be fair, like I said, I do not know the tiny details of law, but at the end of the day what is in law doesn't often get applied to reality in that way, in other word: whatever the law says, I know that in my everyday experience, where people, shop assistants and so on are forced to use metric they do, but where they are allowed to use the measures that are most convenient and comfortable to them, they pick Imperial.

^ Sorry, I've *really* got to start previewing my posts- edit: "..measurements that are *NOT* equivelent.."

Actually, it's "equivalent", not "equivelent"...

Ralf

Yes, that did look a bit funny, but, regardless, I hardly see how that discredits me or us, and emphasises the superiority of your cause.

In tesco they would never look at you odd for asking for food in imperial. They positively encourage it!

Damn Somerfields! Damn them to hell! Well, there are several Tescos within a three or four mile radius of where I live, so it appears I am in luck!

That's a shame about somerfield as they were meant to be "copying" tesco on the subject, realising the rise in customerbase they created.

I believe "Budgens" is copying tesco.

On a related note: Who started selling a "yard of chocolate" recently? Was it Cadbury's, or a supermarket such as Tescos?

I've seen that! It was either Asda or Tesco.

Also I notice loads of "pint cans" making a return (beer+cider)

Well, I wonder if cereal packets measured in lbs/oz will make a return??? Hang on! Were cereal packets *ever* labeled in Imperial!? Honestly, I really have no idea when that stopped.

Personally, I always find it to be a personal insult when I see, "Tate and Lyle Sugar. By Appointment of her majesty the Queen. 1 kg"- but that's just me.

Yeah, that's just you Bryan !

silly Conrad

Bryan it is not in the best style. Whoever they are,
the sugar people should say "By appointment TO
her majesty..." not "By appointment OF..."
Such, in any case, is my view.

And kilogram is a cheerless sterile-sounding unit,
not suitable for nice people like queens. It would
do better for robots, if
they needed boxes of sugar.

No feeling person would want to eat sugar from
a box that said it was a kilogram. It is an affront.

Do you think one might write to the sugar people
and get them to make the label less offensive?
It would be *lese majeste* (rudeness to the sovereign)
if they ever actually got an appointment to go in
and present her the sugar.

As for people who are needlessly rude on message
boards, polite people take no notice of them
at all.

Leonard

Leonard,
are you serious when you're asserting that 1 kg of chocolates tastes bad and 2.2 lbs of the same chocolates don't?

to me the word kilogram tastes bad
it has a nasty feel
and the word pound has a good feel

do you feel good saying "1.6 kilometer"
instead of "one mile"? I am curious? I
assume you grew up saying "kilometer", please
correct me if I am mistaken about you.
Maybe saying "kilometer" feels good. Tell
me about this, about your subjective experience
of the metric words.

I love the mile because it comes from a thousand
roman legion steps. Mille passuum, milia passuum.
Because it is marked by old stones along european

I am watching a German/English movie called Utz now
and answering email
roads two thousand years old. Do you ever want
to say mile? Say on a good day when you are out
in the country, and are happy? Or do you always
enjoy more saying "kilometer"?

These things matter slightly more than chocolate
to me at this time in my life, perhaps as a child
chocolate mattered more. Also people's honest
reactions matter.

>Do you ever want to say mile? Say on a good day when
>you are out in the country, and are happy? Or do you
>always enjoy more saying "kilometer"?

Magic mushrooms in Holland ?
That posting is completely beyond my comprehension...
But, who knows, maybe he's taking "trice" the amount of magic mushrooms than everybody else...

Ralf

Well I see [snore} Ralf [snore] is here.
I just woke and coffee, not magic mushrooms
is the issue.

You don't understand the question about
preferences for words, you say.
Conrad does. He
replied to this on another thread and said
he grew up saying km and kg and likes using
those words.

I'm still wondering if there are some circumstances
where a european (Conrad- or Ralf-style) would
feel like saying mile. I know in Germany people like
to say zoll (kind of for inch?) and pfund (kind of
for pound?) sometimes. Or I think so. Can you say
who uses those words when?

OK, here we go:

Meile: I think "meilenweit" as in "meilenweit entfernt" (miles away) is the only german word that has "mile" in it. And of course the nautical mile

Zoll: "Zollstock" (folding rule) and computer stuff (monitors and diskettes)

Pfund: A "pfund" is a synonym for half a kilo (500 grams)

Concerning the "zoll", I can most whole-heartedly disagree, NOBODY knows how much a "zoll" is (unless they have been to the UK or the US for a while), we only know that a 21'' monitor is big and a 16'' one is small.

Ralf

Oh, BTW, there is a web site for genealogy that has a LOT of ancient measurement stuff on it.

http://www.genealogienetz.de/misc/units/2.html

Cheers,
Ralf
P.S.: Considering "Elle" and how many definitions there are for it, that is already reason enough for metrication.

Exasperated, one might even say tormented, by
the huge variety of units that people have used. Enough reason by itself to nuke them all and replace everything by a gigantic parking lot. Enough of this
cultural and historical multiplicity stuff! Let's
clean house. Delighted by the thought so I checked
to see what Rowlett says

ELL
a traditional unit of length used primarily for measuring cloth. In the English system, one ell equals ... 1.25 yards; in metric terms, an English ell equals exactly 1.143 meters. The word comes from the Latin ulna, which originally meant the elbow and is now the name of the bone on the outside of the forearm. Unfortunately, the same word ulna was also used for the yard, creating frequent confusion between the two units in medieval documents. Probably the ell originated through a custom of measuring lengths of cloth using two forearms, with the hands touching or overlapping. The ell was used with a similar length in France (where it was called the aune). In Scotland, the ell was practically the same as the yard, being equal to 37 Scots inches or 37.2 English inches (94.5 centimeters). This Scottish length appears to reflect an old practice of cloth merchants in giving an extra inch with each yard, to allow for any irregular cutting at the ends of the piece. In eastern Europe, the ell was a shorter distance: see next entry.

ELLE
a traditional unit of distance in German speaking countries. The elle varied considerably, but it was always shorter than the English ell or French aune. A typical value in northern Germany was exactly 2 fuss (German feet), which would be close to 24 inches or 60 centimeters. In the south, the elle was usually longer, about 2.5 fuss. In Vienna, the elle was eventually standardized at 30.68 inches (77.93 centimeters). Although the German word elle is often translated "yard" in English, this is not a very good equivalent.