Author Topic: The move to imperial measures. Complete this survey.  (Read 2898 times)

Offline Jiminy Cricket

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Re: The move to imperial measures. Complete this survey.
« Reply #40 on: June 14, 2022, 06:03:50 pm »
Going back to Imperial Measures in a previous life I was a Trading Standards Officer/Inspector of Weights and Measure. The service has ceased to exist in some local authority areas despite being a statutory requirement (I’m looking at you Chippy Tits)
https://www.tradingstandards.uk/news-policy/news-room/2016/warning-to-councils-over-cuts-to-statutory-services
That's bonkers. How do they get away with that? I see fro the link (above) that Liverpool council have been sued - what was the outcome?
Quote
So not only are there little or no staff to ensure that equipment is legal and not false or unjust but I’m pretty sure most authorities will have either sold off their Imperial test weights and measures or relegated them to a damp spot in the Town Hall cellar.

But at least this lot should be happy,
http://bwma.org.uk/
I am sure they will have sold them off or given them away to collectors (or simply scrapped them) long ago. I can foresee the use of old, rusty scales being dusted off and used by some market traders. They will be ripping off their customers, just like the old days. It is so Dickensian - a Mees-Mogg wet dream.

I don't think it will happen, of course, Or, if it does, it will be edge cases, like with - as I suggested - some market traders and the like. If it goes further than that, where there are requirements to use it (or detail both metric and Imperial on packaging), this would be a huge burden. And exponentially worse if selling goods in Imperial became compulsory. I almost wish it would happen just so we can laugh at the chaos.
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Offline Alan_X

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Re: The move to imperial measures. Complete this survey.
« Reply #41 on: June 15, 2022, 07:59:41 am »
BWMA have this helpful guide to show how straightforward Imperial measurements are:

Despite the fact that imperial units of measurement are still in widespread use in the UK, the USA and many other countries, most young people in Britain today are not taught how to use them. To remedy that, the BWMA has put together the following guide to teach the most basic and commonly used units.

Length

The basic unit of length is the inch. There are 12 inches in a foot. This means that a foot can easily be divided by 2, 3, 4 or 6 to give a round number: one third of a foot is 4 inches, one quarter of a foot is 3 inches, half a foot is 6 inches, and so on. Feet and inches are sometimes expressed with a prime and double prime (inverted commas), so 3 foot 6 inches can be expressed as 3′ 6″. This is often seen on road signs.

There are 3 feet in a yard, or 36 inches. So:

1 yard = 3 feet = 36 inches

1/2 yard = 1 foot 6 inches = 18 inches

1/3 yard = 1 foot = 12 inches

1/4 yard = 9 inches (3/4 of a foot)

1/6 yard = 6 inches (1/2 of a foot)

The inch is typically divided into fractions of one sixteenth for measuring very small lengths. This means it can also be expressed in halves, quarters and eighths of an inch.

The other main units of length after the yard are the chain, furlong and mile. There are 22 yards in a chain, 10 chains in a furlong and 8 furlongs in a mile. This means that:

1 chain = 22 yards = 66 feet

1 furlong = 10 chains = 220 yards = 660 feet

1 mile = 8 furlongs = 80 chains = 1760 yards = 5280 feet

This means that there is a unit for every size of distance people may need to measure in different situations. Feet and inches are used for human heights, yards are used for road sign distances, chains are used for railway measurements, furlongs for measuring fields and horse races, and miles for the distances between towns and cities. There is rarely ever a need to convert directly from miles to yards; the chain and furlong fit in between to give an appropriate unit for each kind of distance.

Area

An acre is an area equivalent to one chain by one furlong, or 22 by 220 yards. This means an acre can easily be divided up into 8 square chains, each of which can be divided into 484 square yards (giving 4840 square yards in an acre). Ten acres make a square furlong, and 64 of these (8×8 in a grid), or 640 acres, make a square mile.

Weight

The main imperial weights you will encounter in day-to-day life are the ounce (oz), pound (lb) and stone (st). 16 ounces are in a pound, allowing division by 2, 4 and 8. The stone provides a unit ideally sized for human weights in between the pound and the next unit up, the hundredweight (cwt). There are 14 pounds in a stone and 8 stones in a hundredweight, meaning there are 112 pounds in a hundredweight. The last unit above that is the ton, which has 20 hundredweight or 2240 pounds.


With no irony at all, it acually highlights that imperial measurements are largely inaccurate and pre-industrial.

A sixteenth of an inch for measuring "very small lengths". In reality, very small lengths ended up being measured in thousandths of an inch or ridiculous sizes like 9/64ths of an inch. This is a list of HSS drill sizes in imperial by size:

1/16, 5/64, 3/32, 7/64, 1/8, 9/64, 5/32, 11/64, 3/16, 13/64, 7/32, 15/64, 1/4, 17/64 and so on. Intuitive? is it fuck.

But of course it's crucial that kids today need to know that an acre is the area that could be ploughed in a day with a horse - one 'furrow long' by a chain...

And it's mad the way they skip from how great it is that a foot can be divided into 12 inches giving 4 x 3 inches and 2 x 6 inches or 3 x 4 inches, but that goes by the board for the puond which is divisible by 16. No mention at all of the usefulness of a stone being divisible by... er... fourteen.

They're right that these ancient measurements were all based on things that were readily available and to hand (a hand = four inches for measuring horses) but we no longer measure water depths with a bit of rope or an inch with the top joint of our thumbs.

And having big units for big things and little units for little things maks asolute sense, but it also makes sense if the big units are easilly converted. 1cm = 10mm, 1m = 1000mm, 1km = 1000m... Kilos and grammes do the same job as pounds and ounces, litres and millilitres do the same as pints and fluid ounces...
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Offline redbyrdz

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Re: The move to imperial measures. Complete this survey.
« Reply #42 on: June 15, 2022, 08:34:20 am »
Yep, I work in an area where a mm is often large, the absolute fuck would I want to try and work in inch!
Had the fun with the drill bits/bolt sizes too, due to some machines being made in the US and needing a 13/64 "hex key".
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Offline rob1966

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Re: The move to imperial measures. Complete this survey.
« Reply #43 on: June 15, 2022, 08:40:24 am »
@Alax_X

That all makes perfect sense :lmao

I bet most of us have socket sets with imperial sockets that have never been used, I do not own a thing with an imperial nut on it. I still use feet and inches and stones for a person height and weight, or say the garden is 30ft long, or travel in miles, but when measuring anything such as worktops, its all metric, so much easier.

« Last Edit: June 15, 2022, 08:42:22 am by rob1966 »
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Offline Jiminy Cricket

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Re: The move to imperial measures. Complete this survey.
« Reply #44 on: June 15, 2022, 09:09:55 am »
And having big units for big things and little units for little things maks asolute sense, but it also makes sense if the big units are easilly converted. 1cm = 10mm, 1m = 1000mm, 1km = 1000m... Kilos and grammes do the same job as pounds and ounces, litres and millilitres do the same as pints and fluid ounces...
And like pounds and stones, there are, of course - and inconveniently - 20 fluid ounces to the pint. Except in the US, where there are only 16 (and proportionately smaller pints of beer). And, US fluid ounces are not quite the same size UK fluid ounces. Oh, and the US does not use stones. So, Imperial is not even standardised across those few nations who continue to use it.
« Last Edit: June 15, 2022, 09:11:48 am by Jiminy Cricket »
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Offline KillieRed

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Re: The move to imperial measures. Complete this survey.
« Reply #45 on: June 15, 2022, 09:28:33 am »
Isn`t this just one of Bozo`s short term dead cats?
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Offline Jiminy Cricket

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Re: The move to imperial measures. Complete this survey.
« Reply #46 on: June 15, 2022, 11:21:20 am »
Isn`t this just one of Bozo`s short term dead cats?
Yes, I expect so. But given that the Government, to a person, is either bat-shit insane or a complete idiot, you cannot rule out that they will actually go through with it.
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Offline Alan_X

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Re: The move to imperial measures. Complete this survey.
« Reply #47 on: June 15, 2022, 11:46:04 am »
Isn`t this just one of Bozo`s short term dead cats?

Everything is a dead cat with this government. There are no plans - just destruction and distraction.
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Offline So… Howard Philips

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Re: The move to imperial measures. Complete this survey.
« Reply #48 on: June 15, 2022, 05:02:11 pm »
And like pounds and stones, there are, of course - and inconveniently - 20 fluid ounces to the pint. Except in the US, where there are only 16 (and proportionately smaller pints of beer). And, US fluid ounces are not quite the same size UK fluid ounces. Oh, and the US does not use stones. So, Imperial is not even standardised across those few nations who continue to use it.

Unless it’s beer, that is!

The Tories historic main sponsors, the Beerocracy, have worked for decades to devalue the pint.

As far back as 1966 it was held in Marshall v Searle that the head of Guinness could be included as part of the pint. Due to the consistency of Guinness you could see the merit in this argument but the brewers, being greedy bastards, continually chipped away trying to argue that the head on any beer could be included as part of the ‘pint’.

Shortly before I retired we had the ludicrous situation where a public an could serve short measure and, unless the customer sparked for it to be topped up, would get away with it.

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Re: The move to imperial measures. Complete this survey.
« Reply #49 on: June 16, 2022, 07:42:07 pm »
And like pounds and stones, there are, of course - and inconveniently - 20 fluid ounces to the pint. Except in the US, where there are only 16 (and proportionately smaller pints of beer). And, US fluid ounces are not quite the same size UK fluid ounces. Oh, and the US does not use stones. So, Imperial is not even standardised across those few nations who continue to use it.
 

You can get a proper 20 oz pint O'Guinness as well as the 16 oz pints of other beers in certain pubs.I'm someone that never really got to grips with the metric system,so i'm all about ya 5 dollar gallon of gas,a couple of inches can make all the difference  and 32 being freezing.

Offline Jiminy Cricket

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Re: The move to imperial measures. Complete this survey.
« Reply #50 on: June 16, 2022, 09:04:01 pm »
You can get a proper 20 oz pint O'Guinness as well as the 16 oz pints of other beers in certain pubs.I'm someone that never really got to grips with the metric system,so i'm all about ya 5 dollar gallon of gas,a couple of inches can make all the difference  and 32 being freezing.
I don't think it isreally the case any more, but when I lived in the UK (more than 10 years ago), weather forecasts tended to state high temperatures in Fahrenheit, and low temperatures in Celsius. ???
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Offline Nobby Reserve

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Re: The move to imperial measures. Complete this survey.
« Reply #51 on: June 16, 2022, 09:46:46 pm »
I don't think it isreally the case any more, but when I lived in the UK (more than 10 years ago), weather forecasts tended to state high temperatures in Fahrenheit, and low temperatures in Celsius. ???


It's still a thing

 ;D

(I guess we have to embellish our shite and utterly boring climate somehow!)
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