[HN Gopher] Metrication timeline (2018)
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Metrication timeline (2018)
Author : tosh
Score : 47 points
Date : 2022-05-29 13:24 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ukma.org.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (ukma.org.uk)
| 323 wrote:
| A weird thing I saw in UK is milk being sold in both metric and
| imperial containers:
|
| 1 L next to 1.13 L (2 pints)
|
| 2 L next to 2.27 L (4 pints)
|
| Luckily the shelf price label always had price/liter.
|
| https://metricviews.uk/2015/10/19/milk-in-a-muddle/
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| UK my local food market has the fruit and veg that is actually
| weighed (massed?) priced per pound (lb) and per Kg. Good mental
| arithmetic practice.
|
| Much of the produce is now displayed in plastic mixing bowls
| and sold as 'a pound (PS) a bowl'. Or pumpkin by the slice.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Kg is mass, lb is weight.
| anotherevan wrote:
| Isn't that pretty much interchangeable for most practical
| purposes whilst residing on planet Earth?
| Ekaros wrote:
| What is often forgotten in the discussion about metric or SI base
| units and specially derived units that they fit together in
| amazing way. It is just not meters, kilograms(I hate the Frech
| for that one, give us Grav back) and seconds. But everything else
| like Newtons, Volts, Amperes, Gauss, Kelvin etc. Where you can
| multiply and divide things and get new units without any other
| actions. One great example where algebra is very useful.
|
| Why isn't there imperial equivalents for Volt or Ampere? There is
| BTU, but others?
| kergonath wrote:
| > I hate the Frech for that one, give us Grav back
|
| Out of curiosity, what was so great about the grave (besides
| the unfortunate connotations in English)?
|
| In any case, you have the French to "thank" for the grave as
| well ;)
|
| > Where you can multiply and divide things and get new units
| without any other actions. One great example where algebra is
| very useful.
|
| Indeed! It is a wonderful sanity check; I cannot count the
| number of times I found a mistake after some straightforward
| dimensions analysis.
| Ekaros wrote:
| It would be base unit without prefix... I'm forever annoyed
| that "kilo"-gram is in use. All others base or derived units
| have no prefix(apart from bar...).
| kergonath wrote:
| Ah yes. To be fair, they could have used the gram as the
| base unit. It might have made the definitions slightly less
| elegant at the time, but now that we have all sort of weird
| conversion factors, nobody would notice.
| Taniwha wrote:
| UK shoe sizes still measured in barleycorns ....
| interestica wrote:
| First item
|
| > 1215 Magna Carta requires "one measure" of wine, corn and cloth
| throughout the realm; and similarly for weights.
|
| Corn is native to North America/Mexico. Was the term more
| general?
| lulzzf wrote:
| [deleted]
| lapsis_beeftech wrote:
| Corn is synonymous with "grain" and in this context means
| whatever food crop is grown locally. In many parts of America
| this is maize, formerly known as "Indian corn".
| amelius wrote:
| And corn syrup, what is it made of?
| smegsicle wrote:
| it's syrup, so probably made of sugar.. and production of
| it seems centered in the US, where as previously stated the
| local grain is corn, so i'd guess it's probably sugar made
| from corn
| shellac wrote:
| In English 'corn' is just a general term for any cereal grain
| or similar (e.g. barleycorn, peppercorn, even 'corned' beef in
| reference to the appearance of salt). In the US it got
| associated particularly with maize for whatever reason.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _The word "corn" outside the US, Canada, Australia, and New
| Zealand refers to any cereal crop, its meaning understood to
| vary geographically to refer to the local staple.[33][34] In
| the United States,[33] Canada,[35] Australia, and New
| Zealand,[36] corn primarily means maize; this usage started
| as a shortening of "Indian corn".[33] "Indian corn" primarily
| means maize (the staple grain of indigenous Americans), but
| can refer more specifically to multicolored "flint corn" used
| for decoration.[37]_
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize#Names
| Taniwha wrote:
| This didn't last though - with taxation fixed by the elected
| governments various kings raised taxes by reducing the size of
| the gallon - this left the wine gallon (the one the US adopted)
| smaller than other gallons, in the 1800s the UK standardised
| back to the existing single imperial gallon which is why the US
| gallon is different from everywhere else (that whole "a pint's
| a pound the world around" aphorism is bogus bullshit, only true
| in the US)
| anonporridge wrote:
| In Britain, 'corn' is a generic word for any cereal grain.
|
| https://www.quora.com/Why-do-the-British-call-wheat-corn
| ztetranz wrote:
| I'm happy to be told I'm wrong but it seems like Australia and
| New Zealand are some of the few countries that have pretty much
| totally changed. I'm a kiwi old enough to have been at high
| school when we changed.
|
| Absolutely everything has officially been metric for many years
| of course but the real test is when there's a big news event and
| some random person tells their unprepared story on TV. From
| recent news events, it seems like even older people really do
| naturally think distances in meters now. I don't think that was
| quite true when I left NZ 22 years ago. I suspect GPS driving
| directions helped with that change.
| anotherevan wrote:
| Australian anecdote.
|
| Still occasionally hear baby weights in lbs.
|
| Height is about the only one you still hear in feet and inches.
| I think the rubric that anything over six foot is quite tall
| and anything under five foot is really short is just too handy.
| Usually specified in metres or centimetres on official forms
| though.
| montefischer wrote:
| I argue fervently against the metricizers, for they chose the
| wrong base for their rationalization of everything. They tried to
| eliminate "arbitrary" measurements and ratios, based on
| vernacular day-to-day objects (hands, feet, paces, sacks of
| grain, etc.) but were blind to the ultimate and ironic
| arbitrariness of the number 10. They rewrote all of society's
| "irrational" measurements to conform to a number system based on
| the number of fingers on two human hands.
|
| Should've picked 12, or even 60 as the numerical base.
| RyEgswuCsn wrote:
| The metric system is indeed as arbitrary as the imperial system
| in terms of its measurements.
|
| But at least the metric system tries to be consistent --
| different units can be related and convert in a systematic way.
| montefischer wrote:
| True. I don't argue for the English imperial system just as I
| do not argue for the Napoleonic imperial system (metric). I
| only point to the rich cultural patchwork that has been lost
| to various administrative imperial projects:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile#Historical
| arlort wrote:
| Unfortunately we do not count in base 12 so whatever benefit
| comes from more fractions being rational is greatly offset by
| the disadvantage of having to multiply/divide by 12 in base 10
|
| > measurements and ratios, based on vernacular day-to-day
| objects
|
| Maybe if there had been just one system everyone used we
| would've kept the varying conversion factors and names based on
| day to day objects
|
| But the arbitrariness that warranted the introduction of a
| single system wasn't as much about unit conversions as it was
| about different areas (even within) the same country basing
| units on different vernaculars and day to day objects
|
| Or even worse using the same word but with different values if
| you moved one town over
|
| And once everyone has to learn a new system might as well make
| it so unit conversions just involves shifting a decimal
| separator rather than multiplying/dividing by 12
| [deleted]
| montefischer wrote:
| Yes, but we could have decided as a civilization to count in
| base 12 just as we decided to measure things in the metric
| system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal, so that
| decimal (dozenal) shifts still work conveniently.
| arlort wrote:
| I don't think the two are equivalent.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_numeral_systems#By_cu
| l...
|
| For the last 2000 years it seems no major civilization used
| base 12 or 60, almost everyone has been using base 10 and
| even those who didn't had opted for 20 instead of 12
|
| Moving from decimal to duodecimal would involve a complete
| break for no practical benefit and at the cost of making
| interactions with every non adopter hellish
|
| Moving from whatever you had before to metric was a minor
| break with the past but it was adopted in the first place
| because the status quo was already hellish
|
| And in the parts of the world that already had a
| standardized system which they shared with most of their
| partners this process was already too much and we're still
| talking about metrication 21/2 centuries later
|
| I doubt we could've switched to base 12
|
| In fact when the same people pushing for metric tried to
| force a decimal calendar (something which was widely
| standardized and for which the shift added no benefits) it
| failed badly
| timmb wrote:
| Well, except the obvious example of the time for which
| nobody seems to seriously want to move from base 60.
|
| I was contemplating this the other day. We coders often
| bang on about the joy of base 16 as pure 2s but what
| makes 60 so useful is it has so many factors:
| 2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20,30. It means you rarely need to
| split a minute when you're dividing up time for everyday
| use.
| kergonath wrote:
| > Yes, but we could have decided as a civilization to count
| in base 12 just as we decided to measure things in the
| metric system
|
| But we did not, so it's a moot point. The metric system
| succeeded because it fit easily with how people measured
| things and had some unarguable upsides (like replacing the
| ~20 different units of length all called "foot"). The
| metric system itself was not a great step into
| decimalisation, it was just the recognition that the number
| systems in used were decimal already. That's why it was so
| easily adopted.
|
| You can see it in the units that were not accepted and then
| all but disappeared: the time and angle units, for which
| the non-decimal units had practical advantages.
| kortex wrote:
| We really goofed as a society on that one. "But humans have
| ten fingers!" Well, we actually have 8 3-segment fingers
| and 2 thumbs, meaning you can count a dozen on one hand,
| and a gross on two, using thumbs as a cursor.
|
| You can also form a set of 12 symbols that is visible from
| farther away by doing shapes similar to ASL:
|
| 1-4: fingers held up
|
| 5-8: touching tip of finger with thumb
|
| 9-12: touching top of 2nd phalanx with thumb.
|
| Holding down the pinky in isolation is tricky so this kinda
| favors starting with pinky out as 1, but you could make
| assorted variants of this system work.
|
| Fractions would be so nice to work with in "dozenal
| metric".
| jeltz wrote:
| A centimeter is a finger width, a decimeter is the width of a
| palm and a meter is a step.
| 2143 wrote:
| So do you have 10 fingers on attached to your palm?
| djbusby wrote:
| Terrans have 5 digits; 4 fingers and 1 thumb per palm
| (generally). Some mutations have additional digits. Some
| have accidentally removed one or more digits.
| 2143 wrote:
| I'm aware. This adds to the point I was trying to make.
|
| Definitions of fundamental quantities based on things
| that aren't contant is simply incorrect.
| 2143 wrote:
| I don't know about you but for most people
| multiplication/division by 10 is easier to do than doing those
| same operations by 1760 or 2.54 (or 12, or 36, or...). Judging
| by your parent comment, I trust that those numbers are familiar
| for you ;)
|
| How much yards is 523 miles?
|
| And, how many metres is 523 kilometres?
|
| -------
|
| You might want to read up about SI base units [1]. That gives
| precise definitions of the fundamental quantities in terms of
| other constants, such that it wouldn't change ever.
|
| Like, a metre has been defined as the distance light travels in
| a given amount of time (this constant amount of time is of
| course a very small fraction of a second). It's never going to
| change. If it had been defined as the length of a horse tail,
| then it would change depending on the horse you use.
|
| (Of course, there's a lot more to it, but I'm omitting the
| details here).
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_base_unit
| montefischer wrote:
| How often does one need to convert miles into yards?
|
| Of course I know about the SI base units, which effectively
| remove the ability of ordinary people to tinker with, use,
| and reason about measurements by placing the system in the
| hands of ultra-experts. Just consider what a diversity of
| miles used to be enjoyed by the world:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile#Historical.
|
| It is impossible to return to the pre-standardization days,
| and I do not argue that we should. Many people enjoy savoring
| the differences that other cultures provide in terms of
| architecture, cuisine, language, etc. and decry the
| destruction of cultural differences wrought by things like
| tourism, globalism, capitalism, whatever. I mourn the loss of
| local measurements just like I do the loss of vernacular
| languages, architectural styles, styles of dress, foods, all
| that.
| kergonath wrote:
| > Of course I know about the SI base units, which
| effectively remove the ability of ordinary people to tinker
| with, use, and reason about measurements by placing the
| system in the hands of ultra-experts.
|
| It's the complete opposite, in fact. A simpler way of
| defining unit helps non-specialist understand them, and not
| only people who've memorised dozens of arbitrary conversion
| factors.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I have wondered. Would SI or metric system work as well in
| duodecimal as it does in decimal? Ofc, decimal kilometer(1000)
| and duodecimal kilometer(base-10 1728) would be different. But
| would it still mesh together as it does?
| 7952 wrote:
| But there is a benefit in standardising on something across
| different domains. So that your weight, money and quantitaties
| are in the same base. Particularly when you are doing more
| complex things. We have to worry about binary, but we don't
| need to worry about florins, bakers dozens and ounces.
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| I agree, though I am a big fan of metric too. Imperial is
| simply more ergonomic for the day to day. This also applies to
| other folk systems such as the Russian or Chinese, to avoid
| notions of Anglo-centrism or Euro-centrism.
|
| If I want to drink until I'm buzzed, I'll have 3 pints of beer,
| not 1.5L or (god forbid) 1500ml.
|
| If I want to run a decent distance I'll do 6 miles, not the
| gruelling sounding 10km.
|
| If I want enough meat to make a stew, I'll have 1 pound, not
| 500g or 0.5kg.
|
| Try losing a 0 or a decimal point in base 12 as well.
| gpvos wrote:
| The Netherlands is thoroughly metricized, but we still have
| the 'pond' as informal usage for 500g. It's nice to have a
| little bit more meat in your stew. :-)
| kergonath wrote:
| > we still have the 'pond' as informal usage for 500g
|
| It's actually one of a few old _mesures usuelles_ that were
| given a convenient, round equivalent in the metric system
| in a decree under Napoleon. The pint (or _demi_ ) is
| another one that is understood these days; the others are
| all but forgotten.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesures_usuelles
| robmsmt wrote:
| since this is hn, perhaps base 16?
| throw0101a wrote:
| And then there's us Canadians who are stuck in some weird
| 'hybrid' / mixed system because of our proximity to the US and
| the economic links we have.
|
| I drive in kph and buy gas in litres, but weigh ~180 pounds and
| am 5' 10" tall. -\\_(tsu)_/-
|
| If you're going to convert systems, some useful things to keep in
| mind:
|
| > _Naughtin's 1st Law: Dual-Scale Instruments are Evil [...]
| Currently, this is a hard rule to apply consistently in the U.S.,
| because well-designed purely metric measures are almost
| impossible to find. This is particularly the case in kitchen
| measures. One can find measuring spoons with metric markings, but
| these are usually smaller than the imperial markings, and the
| numbers make it clear that the metric markings are an
| afterthought. A tablespoon, for example, may carry the secondary
| legend of "15 mL," or even "14.7 mL," as though recipes regularly
| called for such awkward amounts._
|
| > _Naughtin's 2nd Law: Prefer Measures Without Decimals [...] One
| rather startling fact about the Australian metric conversion is
| that nearly all of their industries opted for the millimeter as
| their preferred unit of measure, including the construction
| industry. The plans for Australian houses are drawn up in
| millimeters. [...] Because decimal numbers are eliminated from
| the blueprints. Which means that the guy on the job site running
| the radial arm saw never has to deal with anything but whole
| numbers. Which means that he makes fewer mistakes. Which means
| that waste is greatly reduced._
|
| > _Naughtin's 3rd Law: Don't Change Measures in Midstream [...]
| The most common wine bottle today is 750 milliliters. What then
| should we call a bottle exactly twice that size? For a number of
| reasons, including the fact that it would make the columns in the
| shopkeeper's inventory spreadsheet more readable, because it
| saves the customer from the mental effort of shifting a decimal,
| and because it precludes the need for a decimal at all (see 2nd
| Law, above), the Metric Maven strongly advocates 1500 milliliter
| wine bottles (and responsible consumption). Wine bottles in this
| size, however, are usually labeled 1.5 liters. Wine shop
| advertisements may flip-flop between liters and milliliters,
| decimals and whole numbers. This is not, for once, a matter of
| U.S. metric obstructionism, but a matter of worldwide metric
| obtuseness. Even metric countries could do metric better._
|
| > _Naughtin's 4th Law: No Centimeters! Actually, no centi-
| anything. Also, no deci-anything, no deca-anything, and no hecto-
| anything. But the centimeter is far-and-away the most common
| violation of this rule, and the only one most of us ever hear
| much of, so it gives its name to the law. [...] Drop these four
| prefixes, and there are only two remaining that non-technical
| people will ever have to deal with commonly: kilo for thousands,
| and milli for thousandths. Conversions between measurements
| become almost unnecessary, and on the rare occasions when they do
| crop up, there is one and only one conversion factor to remember:
| 1000._
|
| * https://themetricmaven.com/naughtins-laws/
| devbent wrote:
| I honestly love centimeters because 1cm is roughly the width of
| a pinky fingernail.
|
| Makes it easy to visualize.
|
| Likewise 1 meter being roughly an arm span, or 3 feet.
|
| MI often need to guestimate something and being able to use my
| body parts to do such is super useful!
| mlyle wrote:
| > I honestly love centimeters because 1cm is roughly the
| width of a pinky fingernail.
|
| Not bad to think of this as "10mm", though.
| nemetroid wrote:
| For people who grew up with metric units, there is really
| no thinking involved in conversion between centimeters and
| millimeters. For everyday usage, using millimeters for
| everything is cumbersome, as it requires you to use larger
| numbers and subtly suggests a precision that's usually not
| present. I've seen the sentiment to avoid centimeters in
| favour of millimeters before, but only ever from people who
| don't natively use those units.
| mlyle wrote:
| Though I'm American, I use metric units almost
| exclusively in work and really even outside work. I don't
| really use imperial units for short measurements other
| than to occasionally translate for other people.
|
| I've had multiple "cm or mm" shouting back and forth
| across the room conversations that have caused confusion.
| I've also had a few "vanishing decimal points" in
| drawings which are a bit more confusing in cgs than mmgs.
| I've grown to strongly prefer mm.
|
| False precision is always a risk. But for most things I
| do, mm has the correct amount of precision. (Circuit
| boards like tenths of mm; most small mechanical
| assemblies like a mm or a tenth of a mm).
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| UK: the rule in house plans and other macro-sized objects
| is that measurements where shown are in millimetres. So
| largish whole numbers and no possibility of decimal point
| getting lost.
| bombcar wrote:
| The problem with dropping centimeter is that there is way too
| wide a gap between kilometer, meter, and millimeter.
|
| The centimeter comes is as the "metric inch" and is incredibly
| useful.
| kibwen wrote:
| Yes, the fundamental problem is that there appear to be,
| empirically, certain scales of length that humans find
| intuitive, and it is the job of a well-designed system of
| units to adapt to human intuition rather than forcing humans
| to adapt to the units. For some units this is easy, as humans
| are mediocre at intuiting measures of weight (grams are fine,
| "about the weight of a raisin") and awful at intuiting
| measures of volume, but are pretty decent at intuiting
| lengths, so you want to support a variety of intuitive
| lengths without forcing people to resort to big numbers
| (larger than 100) or decimals. mm, cm, m, and km are pretty
| good, though it's slightly lacking in a "foot-length"
| equivalent (dm has never been used by anybody in history, and
| is a bit too small regardless; maybe it would be better if
| the metric length units were all 1.5 times longer).
| Taniwha wrote:
| mm is roughly the width of a saw cut - in credibly useful as
| a base unit for carpentry
| throwyawayyyy wrote:
| Similar! I'm British, so the weight of everything is in kilos;
| unless it's very heavy, in which case it's interchangeably tons
| or tonnes; or it's a person, in which case it's in stone.
| Except that now I've been living in the US for years, I still
| think of everything in kilos, but people in pounds.
|
| As this timeline points out, _under the hood_ everything is
| metric and has been so for a very long time (and this is true
| of the US too). I find it hard to get worked up about.
| mgbmtl wrote:
| My theory is that we tend to use feet for height because that's
| what our parents used. These days or driving license displays
| only cm, and rarely hear younger folks use feet (my 15yo looks
| at me weird when I do). Same for 24h time, but because of
| mobile phones (Quebec).
|
| My main issue for me is fruit and veggies. They're always in
| lbs because the price seems lower. Although I measure meat in
| kg because my butcher is a French immigrant and yells at is of
| we use imperial units.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Same for 24h time, but because of mobile phones (Quebec)._
|
| I'm in Toronto and use 24h wherever I can (especially as a
| sysadmin).
| anotherevan wrote:
| My dad who just retired at age 83 from the Australian building
| industry explained it to me that plans and measurements will
| use either metres or millimetres, but never centimetres. The
| thinking being you can usually figure out which is which for
| any given number, but you add centimetres into the mix then it
| becomes much more ambiguous.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Well, the government has found time in its busy schedule of
| populism and regressionism to fix some of this travesty:
| https://metro.co.uk/2022/05/28/boris-johnson-to-announce-imp...
| kergonath wrote:
| It's a logical step after the blue passports. And like the
| passports, a useful distraction. But did anyone tell him that
| these glorious imperial units were just weird multiples of the
| corresponding SI units these days?
| formerly_proven wrote:
| The 50s seem to be hugely popular with populists on "both
| sides" (of the atlantic)... they all seem to want them back
| urgently.
| jabl wrote:
| The post-war period (la trente glorieuses, if you pardon my
| horribly mangled French) was a time of rapidly improving
| living standards, both due to the end of wartime rationing
| and rapid economic growth, and general societal optimism. So
| there is some reason behind that yearning.
|
| And of course, how convenient that people with first hand
| experience of the time period and able to offer comments that
| it wasn't all roses, are either dead or retired from public
| life.
|
| But obviously, you're not going to bring back such a time by
| going back to imperial units. Effin' idiots.
| [deleted]
| 323 wrote:
| Political commentators say this is just to distract from
| PartyGate.
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(page generated 2022-05-29 23:01 UTC)