Green ACRES is the place for me ...

It is probably true that somewhere in a dusty filing cabinet in Ottawa an edict from a grey suited bureaucrat declares that hectares are a wonderful thing ....

HOWEVER according to the Canadians I've spoken to they never use hectares. (Unfortunately they believed that the UK almost exclusively uses hectares - I put them straight on that point).

Yes the farming industry is wonderfully non-metric in Canada. Crop yields are expressed in imperial, whilst cereal prices are quoted in CDN$/lb.

Just to say 'thank you' for your recent series of valuable postings. I was able to use your information today on a radio programme, where my opponent (from the U.K. Metric Association) claimed that 94% of the world was 'happily' using metric weights and measures. I guess he was trying to include 100% of Canadians in that statistic

I'm glad you could use the information. You've prompted me to post a few statistics on this site that could be quoted whenever the pro-metric lobby spouts their usual misinformed 'everybody else uses metric' line.

Laying aside imperial measurments for a minute, as well as metric ones, how much of the world uses neither set of measurements, if there are any other ones in existance?

I would guess that on the whole, metric is still the most commonly used system however.

What measurements do former UK colonies, such as Kenya, India, Uganda etc. use? It would be interesting to know, as obviously countries like New Zealand, Australia and Canada probably use imperial measurements in everyday conversation although officially their governments may have converted to metric. Today in The Times, for example, there was an article in the Travel section on travelling by motorbike in New Zealand and speed limits were quoted in km/h although the imperial equivalent was also given. Also, if you ever watch Neighbours then you'll notice that the charachters in that often talk about "k's" when mentioning distances. A stupid question, but I take it that means kilometers?

In South Africa, metric measure is used for almost everything. In the early 1970's when SOuth Africa was intgroducing the metric system, the retail indsiutry were prohibited from selling measuring devices calibrated in Imperial units. I beleive that Australia passed similar laws.

In other Afrcan Commonwealth coutries, the metric system apears to be as deepley entrenched. Canada seems to have sufferd the misfortune of having the USA as a neighbour and having its economy closely tied in with the US economy, so they found it difficult to press the metric case as much as their Commonwealth partners.

SOme years ago I watch a film that was set in South Africa in the 1970's and had a very anti-Apartheid theme to it (It was actually shot in Kenya). During the course of the film, a guerilla leader was talking to a recently-liberated political prisoner. In teh course of their conversation, the guerilla leader made the comment "I have gone metric".

Well you have to pity poor Canada don't you? I mean, having their economy closely tied to the most dynamic economy in the world!

That certainly puts a brake on important issues like getting metric units adopted. If they'd been luckier they might have had a more progressive country like Zimbabwe for a neighbour, and then they'd have been able to get on with metrication :)

Canada, like Ireland and New Zealand, has a very influencial neighbour and as a result often adopt their neighbour's policies when their neighbour's policies only go 80% of the way to meeting their own requirements.

In contrast, South Africa and Australia do not have influencial neighbours and as a result take the lead in drawing up regulations that affect the part of teh world where they are situated.

In the context of the influence of neighbouring countries that Martin mentions .... I'm interested to know if the anecdotal stories from the early 70s have any basis in fact i.e. that it was the influence of cars being shipped in from Japan with the 'wrong' speedos that encouraged Australia and New Zealand to go metric.

I suspect that this is probably revisionist as presumably Japan was quite capable of supplying cars to local specs ... unless of course the market was being saturated either with unofficial imports or else with second hand cars.

I seem to recall that at one time New Zealand post offices supplied paper 'converters' that one could stick onto the speedo to turn km/h back to mph.

I also seem to recall that in the early days of 'official' metric speedos in Australia the odometer was still calibrated in miles.

Can anyone verify these things?

I cannot talk for Australia or New Zealand, but I can talk for South Africa.

1. Certain garages sold gadgets that you could attach to your speedometer cable to increase its rate by 1.609. This turned your mph speedometer intoi a km/h speedometer.

2. It would have been illegal in SOuth Africa to convert a km/h speedometer back to a mph speedometer. Furthermore public opinion was either neutral or pro-metric (even amongst the most anti-APartheid sectors of the community.

3. The South African Government had earned the trust of the population is respect of changes of this nature over its handling of decimalisation. They went to great lengths to prevent profiteering. The UK's handling of decimalisation was very poor in this respect with the Post Office leading the profiterrign racket by increasing postage rates from 2.5d to 2.5p overnight (a 2.4 fold increase!).

4. I believe that in Australia, metrication was popular because they wer asserting their indepedence from those pommie b******s who can't even play cricket!

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I seem to recall that at one time New Zealand post offices supplied paper 'converters' that one could stick onto the speedo to turn km/h back to mph.
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I find this very difficult to believe - in the 1970's teh Post Offices were part of the Government machinery, so why would they sell devices that run contrary to Government policy? Also, how many different types of sticker would they have to supply?

Finally, it would be a safety hazard to perpetuate mph speedometers when all the speed limits are in km/h

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Also, if you ever watch Neighbours then you'll notice that the charachters in that often talk about "k's" when mentioning distances. A stupid question, but I take it that means kilometers?
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Yes - the South Africans also talk about "k's"

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Today in The Times, for example, there was an article in the Travel section on travelling by motorbike in New Zealand and speed limits were quoted in km/h although the imperial equivalent was also given.
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The mph equivalent was almost certainly added in by the Times reporter for the benefit of UK readers.

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I'm interested to know if the anecdotal stories from the early 70s have any basis in fact i.e. that it was the influence of cars being shipped in from Japan with the 'wrong' speedos that encouraged Australia and New Zealand to go metric.
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This is unlikely. If Australia was anything like South Africa, then they had an indigenous car assembly industry. South Africa (which had a much smaller GDP than Australia) required that all cars sold there had a 70% local content. I also recall that in pre-metric days, speedos in SOuth Africa were often marked in "MPH/MPU" - "Miles per hour/Myl per uur". If SOuth Africa could enforce such rules, then so could Australia. Some more urban legend I am afraid.

Yes of course the signs are in km/h in New Zealand nowadays ... but the question is about back in the early 70s when they weren't.

It was New Zealanders who told me about the paper converters back then ... I'm just checking out the story with anyone who remembers.

Martin, you are right in part, wrong in part.

Australia and New Zealand did indeed have several local car production plants between them in the early 1970s. But they also imported cars without content quotas.

My question was about the importation of Japanese cars and whether during the early 70s (when both countries used miles per hour) the market was flooded by grey imports and personal imports from Japan with metric speedos.

This is what I was told in Australia by Australians. I just wanted to know if anyone had an authoritative source of information as to whether this prompted the policy of road metrication down under.