As noted in a comment on our last article, the BBC’s acclaimed new series Blue Planet 2 uses metric measures for smaller distances and depths but miles for greater ones. Ronnie Cohen takes this opportunity to look at instances when kilometres are preferred to miles.
In the UK, miles are generally preferred to kilometres, especially in the non-specialist media. This is probably a consequence of the continued use of miles on road traffic signs, and contrasts with the widespread use of metric measures for shorter distances. However, we are accustomed to using the kilometre in many different contexts in the UK, and this article looks at some of them.
Athletics
These have been metric for as long as most people can remember. Although the Olympic Games have used metric units since their foundation in 1896, the Commonwealth Games did not adopt metric measures until 1970. The official distance of the marathon is 42.195 km.
Marathon and charity races
Such long-distance races are often advertised as 5K and 10K races. There often seems to be a reluctance to use the symbol for the kilometre – km.
Football (soccer) commentaries
I have occasionally been surprised when Match of the Day has shown the number of kilometres a footballer has run in a game among the statistics. English football remains Imperial, but the rights to broadcast it are sold worldwide and, as with Blue Planet 2, he or she who pays the piper calls the tune.
Rugby football
From 1975, metric measures have been used in the game. For example, the 25 yard line became the 22 metre line.
Fuel efficiency figures
Official fuel efficiency figures for vehicles are expressed as litres per 100 kilometres (L/100 km). The lower the figure, the more fuel-efficient the vehicle. Typical values fall between 4 and 10 L/100 km.
Emission levels
Emission levels are expressed as grams per kilometre (g/km) in car advertisements and reviews.
Driver location signs and marker posts
Driver location signs and marker posts show the number of kilometres from the start of the motorway. These reference markers are used by the emergency services to locate incidents.
Footpath signs
Kilometres are shown on some footpath signs around the UK, either alone or alongside miles. Contrary to the impression created by groups that specialise in vandalising signs, those which have planning permission meet legal requirements whatever units are used.
Media reports
Some newspapers and magazines use kilometres to express long distances in their reports, either alone or alongside miles. However, some national British newspapers appear to prefer miles to kilometres. Usage varies between newspapers. Some have a policy of letting their journalists use what units they like. Television and radio programmes aimed at an international audience that are broadcast in the UK, such as BBC Newsday, tend to use kilometres.
Canal and river navigation signs
Canal and river signs are not covered by the derogation for the continued use of miles, yards, feet and inches on British road signs. So canal and river signs must show kilometres for distances and kilometres per hour for speed limits.
Modern tram and light rail systems
Modern British tram and railway systems such as the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) and the Croydon tram network are entirely metric and use kilometres. As the metric ERTMS signalling system is rolled out over the next 20 years, the use of kilometres will increase on British railways (see https://metricviews.uk/2014/08/metrication-of-the-rail-network/ for more details).
Diamond-shaped speed signs for tram drivers use a white background with a black border. The black digits that appear on these signs represent tram speed limits in kilometres per hour. These signs are only intended for tram drivers.
Ordnance Survey maps
Ordnance Survey maps use a kilometre-based grid and have used metric scales for over forty years.
Commercial road atlases
Commercial road atlases use kilometre-based gridlines and dual scales. Typically, the scales use both miles and kilometres. Despite the fact that the Ordnance Survey is exclusively metric and is the basis for commercial map makers, dual-measurement road atlases are undoubtedly strongly influenced by the continued use of miles on British roads.
Funfair ride information
Information about funfair rides was given in metric units, including speeds in kilometres per hour. I wrote about this in a previous Metric Views article, which you can find at https://metricviews.uk/2015/11/model-metric-citizens/.
High Speed 1
Britain’s only high-speed line, HS1, from London St Pancras to Folkestone, has speed limit signs in km/h (shown as “KMH”).
Tachographs and speed limiters for large vehicles
Tachographs use kilometres to record the travel distances for big vehicles. The speed limiters used for big vehicles are based on kilometres per hour, which is incompatible with official speed limit signs on British roads.
Motorcycle tests
Motorcycle tests include an emergency stop at 50 km/h, which is the standard speed limit for urban areas throughout Europe, except the UK of course. You can find out more about British motorcycle tests in a previous MV article at https://metricviews.uk/2010/04/dft-imperialists-waste-more-taxpayers-money/.
Documentaries and science programmes
Documentaries and science programmes often use kilometres.
Fitness equipment
The information displayed on exercise equipment at gyms is typically metric. That includes the number of kilometres run on treadmills. Motion speeds (e.g. running, rowing, cycling, etc.) tend to be shown in kilometres per hour.
British legislation and official publications
Official use of measurement units is metric for most purposes with only limited official use of imperial (i.e. road signs, draught beer and cider, doorstep milk and precious metals). This includes the use of measurement units in British legislation. For example, the Commons Act 2006 uses square kilometres for land areas (source: http://www.commonsreregistration.org.uk/). Road traffic volumes are published in both kilometres and miles (source: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/road-traffic-statistics). Government publications also tend to use kilometres.
Speedometers
Speedometers in cars sold in the UK show both miles and kilometres. This is a legal requirement.
Weather visibility
Visibility levels are expressed in metres for short distances and kilometres for long distances. The UK Met Office has been metric for most purposes for over 50 years.
Readers may be able to suggest additions to this list.
Metric Views 
How can we put pressure on the BBC to use metric measurements? They don’t seem to have an editorial policy on this.
LikeLike
As has been noted in many places British documentaries vary wildly in their use (or not) of metric and Imperial.
It is hard to know why there is such a mish-mash in most cases since the narration is entirely scripted from start to finish. (What people who are interviewed such as the guest scientists on the show is another matter.) Sometimes once can guess that the primary market for the program in the USA, which could explain the use of Imperial. However, documentaries such as those produced by the BBC are (I would imagine) marketed world-wide, to include countries such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, which would argue for at least including metric even if it is always given alongside Imperial.
The latest befuddling head scratcher comes from the otherwise superb and entertaining program with David Attenborough about the British National Museum. For the entire first half of the program Sir David uses only metric. I was ecstatic! Then, suddenly, he switches to Imperial (albeit followed by metric, almost as if the latter were given in virtual parentheses 😉
Why on earth the sudden switch midway through the program? I cannot fathom a reasonable answer.
The good news is that once road signs get converted in the UK to metric this whole problem will rapidly disappear given what we know transpired in Canada and Ireland after their road signs were converted to metric.
LikeLike
Speaking of footpath signs, this one might be of interest:
The BWMA and ARM appear to be on a roll. They damage signs and are treated like heroes.
Burnely Council supposedly has GIVEN IN and will convert their metric footpath signs to Imperial. ARM even got an article written about them on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/english-vigilantes-use-ladders-sticky-letters-to-exterminate-the-metric-system-1508771510
There has to be something the UKMA can do to be an effective counter-force. You have to fight fire with fire.
LikeLike
Some 20-odd years ago, when I lived in Canada, I subscribed to the American publication Car & Driver. One month, the Editor-at-Large commented on his own special page how well USC numbers worked in computing time and distance, in particular the fact that 60 mph equated to 1 mile per minute, and that metric measures offered no such mnemonics.
Au contraire, I wrote in. In metric, you have the following:
Short journeys are usually measured in minutes. A good urban/suburban journey can easily achieve 60 km/h (37 mph). Which of course is 1 km per minute. Aunt Agatha’s house is 20 km away? Expect to get there in 20 min.
Conversely, long journeys are usually measured in hours. And a good average on such a journey is 100 km/h (62 mph). Driving the 700 km from LA to San Francisco? Expect it to take 7 hours.
And to achieve that 100 km/h average speed, including stops at rest areas and the like, you would probably have to be driving at – er hmm – 120 km/h (75 mph, 2 km per minute). The next exit is 12 km away? You’ll reach it in 6 minutes.
The E-at-L agreed with me, to the point that he quoted me personally on his page, and pointed out that, yes, metric units on the roads DO work better than USC.
Just a pity that, E-at-L of one of America’s foremost motoring journals notwithstanding, the USA has made no further advancement in that respect. As of course, neither has the UK.
LikeLike
When Germany invaded Belgium in 1914, the Belgian mapping service, which was based in Zeebrugge, were able to move their copperplates to the UK. The British army made extensive use of these plates, but had to change the metric grid to an Imperial grid. However they saw the benefit of the metric grid and between the 1920’s and the 1940’s the War Office developed the “War Office Cassini Grid” which was a forerunner to the current Ordnance Survey grid.
If you visit the Cabinet War Room in Whitehall from which many World War II operations were directed (now part of the Imperial War Museum), you can see a war-time map on the wall. It clearly has a 10 km grid. The current reference OS north-south grid line (2 degrees West) passes about 900 metres to the west of Brownsea Island in Poole Bay. The Cassini Grid used a different reference north-south line, so one can quickly tell one projection from the other by looking for the closest north-south grid line to Brownsea Island in Poole Bay. The map in the Cabinet War Room employed the Cassini grid, developed in 1927.
LikeLike
Can I have a ruling on the correct abbreviation for pounds weight?
So many times I’ve see “lbs” , but my instinct tell me it should be “lb”.
After all you wouldn’t see “10 kgs”, now would you?
Yes, I do read the Daily Mail on line even though I’m banned from contributing. DM editor even threatened to contact my employer. Good luck with that.
Jack the retired Japan Alps Brit
LikeLike
We have recently subscribed to Netflix. Not sure if this has been noted before, but Netflix is running a series in their Science and Nature section titled: Precision: The Measure of All Things. I’ve only watched the first episode so far, but it is very predominantly (but not entirely) metric. Certainly its focus is on defining the metre and the second. Just a pity that its presenter, Professor Marcus du Sautoy, reverts to miles on a number of occasions when describing some distances.
LikeLike
@John Frewen-Lord:
It is sad that the professor not infrequently refers to “miles” in the program, but I think you can blame the road signs being stuck in Imperial thanks (or not!) to all the governments since Thatcher for that.
LikeLike
@jackthesmilingblack
“Can I have a ruling on the correct abbreviation for pounds weight?”
I can only answer for the US and the answer is not a definitive one. (There is no Customary Brochure.)
NIST has symbolized all Customary abbreviations to an invariant form, lower case, no period, no plural.
(For example, see NIST Handbook 44, Appendix C.)
In the rules for dual labeling net contents, the FTC rules follow SI guidelines for the metric declaration. For the customary, they show the above NIST symbol-like abbreviations but state that case, plurals and periods are optional.
I follow the NIST guidelines, “lb” is the right answer, but not universal.
LikeLike
@jackthesmilingblack – The general principles for the writing of unit symbols and numbers were first given by the 9th CGPM (1948, Resolution 7). They now appear in the SI Brochure. These general principals were adopted by ISO for use in ISO 31-0:1981 (which was replaced by ISO 31:1992 and later by ISO 80000-1:2009). I have not read the ISO standard, but from the way that the ISO standards are written, it is unlikely that special rules will have been made for non-SI units.
I once looked at ISO 31-1:1992 (courtesy of the British Library), a document that “Gives name, symbol and definition for 21 quantities and units of space and time”. I noticed that it catalogued the foot (symbol “ft”) as a “deprecated unit, formerly in ISO-31-1:1978”. The pound and its symbol would have been in ISO 31-3 and I suspect that like the foot, it was defined in ISO 31-3:1978 and listed as “deprecated” in ISO 31-3:1992.
The upshot of this is that it is highly likely that between 1978 and 1992, ISO recommended that the symbol “lb” should remain unchanged regardless of whether the associated value was singular or plural. After 1992, they pound was discarded from the list of recommended units supported by ISO.
For the record, the SI Brochure is edited by a committee made up of representatives of various national and international bodies (including ISO) under the chairmanship of the BIPM nominee.
LikeLike
Excellent rebuttal John. This is what happens when a people who have never learned the metric system or learned it poorly make rash and haste judgements without actually thinking it through. This is the same with many industries. The internet discussion boards are loaded with nonsense mostly from Americans who think building in inches is better because sizes are based around 12 (not always) and you can divide 12 into more parts than 10 and you can’t divide a metre into thirds.
The truth is the metric system has no rules as to number choices and producing construction products in increments of 300 mm works better than than inches as the standard sizes like 600, 1200, 2400, 4800 mm can be divided into a large quantity of whole numbers of millimetres, where as as inches and its odd fractions are hard to work with.
Not knowing the truth and not wanting to know the truth has handicapped generations of American builders and assemblers. No wonder the German economy is passing the US by, but as with the metric system, Americans are blinded to anything that they don’t want to acknowledge. Their loss is everyone else’s gain.
LikeLike
http://www.eadt.co.uk/news/anger-over-kilometre-direction-signs-for-christmas-fayre-in-bury-st-edmunds-1-5309843
Part of the problem why the kilometre is being resisted is the media. They print articles like this to make it appear there is anger when kilometre signs appear. Such that some organisations are afraid to upset what they think is a large portion of the population when in fact it may only be a small minority.
Who would not know what a kilometre is since it has been taught since the ’70s in all of the schools?
LikeLike
Even though my own mother is french and we live in Ireland,I have been using metric all my life. I have started reading about the imperial system and frankly it’s really fascinating. All these quirky measures are wonderful – I’m making an effort to mentally imagine stuff in miles, pounds, yards, etc instead of metric.
LikeLike
@ Anon. :2018-01-13 at 06:43
This is a pure wind up, right? Quirky is one description, wonderful they are not.
To those of us cursed with having to calculate with a mixture of these abominable units throughout our lives they were not so wonderful.
Live in your historic dream world by all means, but please leave it there, do not try to pretend there is anything good about a life past.
Just a simple everyday task such as a nurse calculating say, a persons BMI using – feet and inches and stones and pounds and ounces, try it, no calculator, no computer, no google, no wiki, just pencil and paper, using just your own brain. Then try long devision of pounds shillings and pence.
Yes, as a way of earning a living it was real, real fun (not).
LikeLike
Re Daniel Jackson’s post:
Council spokesman Mark Beaumont said: “In this case this was a partner’s sign pointing pedestrians from their site into town. We can assure that any of our signs give distances in miles or metres.” Er… If kilometres are not metres what are they?
LikeLike
Anon wrote “I’m making an effort to mentally imagine stuff in miles, pounds, yards, etc instead of metric.” Try manipulating quantities quoted in these units. Work out the average of a set of weights expressed in stones and pounds (calculators and/or spreadsheets permitted), or the area of a piece a land with sides quoted in yards and feet.
LikeLike
Re: Daniel Jackson’s post and @Cliff:
One person is quoted in the article as saying:
“On every other direction sign you see in this country the distance is given in miles, just like it has been for centuries.”
Another clear signal that not changing road signs to metric is really holding the UK back. Just as in Canada and Ireland, switching to metric road signs will produce a shift in most people’s minds that metric is OK and also teach them via pure experience what different distances in metric “look like”, which will them seem to be perfectly natural.
LikeLike
@ Ezra Steinberg: 2018-01-16 at 21:27
“On every other direction sign you see in this country the distance is given in miles, just like it has been for centuries.”
Lets not play the country down too much on this issue. This statement is far from true in UK today. As this article above, itself shows: – “Kilometres are shown on some footpath signs around the UK, either alone or alongside miles. Contrary to the impression created by groups that specialise in vandalising signs, those which have planning permission meet legal requirements whatever units are used.”
In fact many ‘National Trust’ and ‘Parks and Gardens’ areas are sign posted in metric only.
LikeLike
The above posts prompted me to complete a 30 year exercise to digitise my old L.s.d. bank statements. This is money, but a similar problem occurs with tons-stones-pounds-ounces and miles-yards-feet-inches, except we had no computers then, not even an adding machine.
As an example of the spreadsheet formula, enjoy, This is why we went decimal!! : –
The running bank statement formula for decimal currency: –
=(G491-D492+E492)
The same running bank statement formula for pounds, shillings and pence (calculates those wonderful various bases): –
=SUM(P9+H10-D10)+INT((SUM(Q9+I10-E10)+INT(SUM(R9+J10-F10)/12))/20)=MOD(SUM(Q9+I10-E10)+INT(SUM(R9+J10-F10)/12),20)=MOD(SUM(R9+J10-F10),12).
If anyone actually needs to do the same thing I will explain how to use it!
LikeLike
Long distance cycle randonneuring has been in kilometres since at least 1891, regardless of the local state of metrication at the time it was taken up in other countries. Including UK and even USA!
The modern Olympics (‘Athletics’ heading above) were founded following a series of meetings in a UK pub, although I couldn’t say whether the beer was in pints at the time 😉…
@John Steele:
Didn’t NIST also grossly overestimate the USA as being already 50 ‰ metric a few years ago?
@Martin Vlietstra:
The deprecated pound ℓb/ ℔s is still there almost identical in ISO 80000-4:2006 [English version] (Mechanics), but ISO 80000-3:2006 (Space and Time) has changed the symbol for imperial miles to ‘mi’ and dropped the symbol for their square. That imperial is so unstable and subject to the whim of non-authoritative sources are only two of its many downsides. Interestingly, ISO 80000-1:2009 (General) notes that ‘the SI prefixes are also used together with the ISO currency codes, e.g. […] 1 GSEK = 1 000 000 000 SEK (Swedish crown)’.
@BrianAC:
No thanks. You might end up nearly putting a spacecraft into orbit around Mars with a formula that complicated 😅! Worth remembering that no country which properly decimalised its currency has yet gone back to L–s–d…
LikeLike
@Mark Williams
My guess is that 50% is an over-estimate, but maybe not gross. No one really knows because no one really studies it. It is probably 20% based on the auto industry alone. Other metric industries might bring it as high as 40% but I doubt 50%. But, we all use metric at work and a mix at home. We also tend to stay quietly in the closet due to all the trash talk (‘MERICA) from the people who dislike metric. Most of us can fake Customary pretty convincingly as long as we don’t have to actually solve engineering problems with it.
If you’re a supplier. then if you are not metric, we won’t buy parts from you. If you’re a car customer, what specs would you like converted to Customary to help you decide? We can all do a reverse lookup in NIST SP 811.
LikeLike
@Mark Williams,
Back in the ’90s, the NIST (or some other group) sent out a survey to industry to see how much metric they used in producing their products. The results were that 60 % of American industry operated internally in metric.
A lot of this may have to do with the auto and heavy machinery industries fully metricating in the ’70s and requiring their suppliers do the same.
I have often used SI prefixes with currency symbols (M$ for megadollar), only to be told by metric proponents this was wrong. I’m happy to see I was right all along.
It looks like a complete muddle to see an amount written as $ 16 M, instead of the more logical and correct 16 M$.
LikeLike
@John Steele:
The ‘’Merica’ trash talk sounds a lot like [at least attempted] preemptive intimidation/ bullying to me—and, even if it is being perpetrated by the ≥95 ‰, needs to be challenged and made socially unacceptable to prevent it becoming an insurmountable obstacle to further metrication of USA.
In UK, I strive to garble imperial badly enough for any archaic unit fan interlocutor to beg for the metric instead; 212Ⅰbs = 100 kg → 0 LB = −17.7… kg, 4.55gal ≈ 1 dm³, etc.
@Daniel Jackson:
Well, nearly right. The cited standard only mentions currency codes and not symbols, so: 16 MUSD. Apropos of nothing, the ITA2 character set used in telex, does not have a $ figure but does have a £ (or #)!
LikeLike
It seems that the BBC’s continued use of Imperial and the metric muddle has unexpected indirect affects.
Just watched a show from ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corp) about climate change in Greenland. Of course the reporter used metric throughout. However, one of her Greenlander guides described a wave created by a crashing iceberg as “15 feet tall”.
The guide knew that the reporter spoke English. Nonetheless, despite her being Australian, he just assumed that “English speaking” implied “uses Imperial”. Very disappointing.
I suspect this Greenlander made that assumption because of the metric muddle that persists inside the (not too far away) UK, on top of the even worse muddle in Canada and the unfortunate persistence of Imperial in the USA.
LikeLike
Oh Ezra,
It appears from your observations that the BBC or more so the people who make the decisions at the BBC have no real unit policy. If they do, it isn’t enforced. Such that they allow individual reporters and editors to use their personal preferred units.
If a reporter is saying miles it is because they want to. In some cases they may even insist the people they are interviewing use their preferred units too or else they are edited out. They don’t care if the world uses their units or not, and when it comes to imperial they derive great joy in promoting imperial in a last ditch effort to force others to learn it and use it.
Your not going to stop them, The more you try the more empowered they feel to continue on. Your best bet is not to listen to or subscribe to their reports and encourage others not to either. Hopefully they will lose viewership and their program will be removed or they will be replaced by someone using SI units fully.
LikeLike
Many of the football teams use metric measures for the heights of players. Here are five examples (out of 20 teams):
AFC Bournemouth:
Simon Francis, 183 cm tall
https://www.afcb.co.uk/teams/first-team/simon-francis
Brighton & Hove Albion
Jason Steele, height 188 cm
https://www.brightonandhovealbion.com/teams/first-team/goalkeeper/jason-steele/
Cardiff City
Alex Smithies, height 185 cm
https://www.cardiffcityfc.co.uk/teams/first-team/goalkeeper/alex-smithies2/
Chelsea
Rob Green, height 1.88m (6 ft 2 in), weight 92 kg
https://www.chelseafc.com/en/teams/first-team/rob-green?pageTab=biography
Crystal Palace
Wayne Hennessey, height 198 cm
https://www.cpfc.co.uk/teams/first-team/goalkeeper/wayne-hennessey/
In four of these cases the clubs gave the height only in centimetres; with Chelsea, the centimetres came first. (I checked two other teams, Arsenal and Burnley, but I could not find any information on individual players on their websites.)
With an international game like football, it is understandable that the teams use metric measures. However, it is also a significant example of the use of metric measures in the United Kingdom.
LikeLike
I checked out the remaining 13 Premier League football teams. 6 teams gave just metric heights and weights, 5 teams gave no height or weight information and two teams gave both but put the imperial measures first.
Everton
Leighton Baines
http://www.evertonfc.com/players/l/lb/leighton-baines
Height: 1.70m Weight: 69.9kg
Fulham
Tim Ream
https://www.fulhamfc.com/player-profiles/tim-ream
Height: 186.1cm Weight: 79.4kg
Huddersfield Town
Ben Hamer
https://www.htafc.com/matches/first-team/goalkeeper/ben-hamer/
HEIGHT 193 cm
Leicester City
Danny Ward
https://www.lcfc.com/players/4522/Danny-Ward/profile
HEIGHT 6’3″ (191cm) WEIGHT 13st 12lbs (88kg)
Liverpool
No height or weight data found
Manchester City
No height or weight found
Manchester United
No height or weight found
Newcastle United
No heights or weights found
Southampton
Alex McCarthy
HEIGHT 193 CM WEIGHT 79 KG
Tottenham Hotspur
No heights or weights found
Watford
Craig Cathcart
https://www.watfordfc.com/teams/first-team/craig- cathcart
HEIGHT 190 cm WEIGHT 83 kg
West Ham United
Aaron Cresswell
https://www.whufc.com/teams/first-team/squad/aaron-cresswell#Profile
Weight 66 kg Height 170 cm
Wolverhampton Wanderers
John Ruddy
https://www.wolves.co.uk/team/first-team/john-ruddy/
Height: 6’4″ (193cm) Weight: 15st 4lbs (97kg)
Out of the 20 teams in the Premier League, 10 gave just metric measures, one gave both but put the metric measures first and two gave both but put the imperial measures first. The remaining 7 teams gave no height and weight measures.
LikeLike
The BWMA is at it again:
https://www.lgcplus.com/services/environment/grayling-accused-of-micromanaging-over-metric-system-warning/7028693.article
LikeLike
Just saw another reminder on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) of how almost 50 years on Canada remains firmly converted to metric when it comes to longer distances because they converted to metric road signs back in the 70’s.
The segment looked into how long you should really wait to change your engine oil and whether dealerships told customers the truth or tried to get them to change their oil more often (supposedly just to generate more business and income).
In every case both the reporter and the dealership employees used “kilometers” rather than “miles” to talk about the point when the oil should be changed. Since all the road signs use “kilometers”, all of the car odometers use kilometers and all of the car owner manuals specify only “kilometers”. (Of course, all of the speedometers use “km/h” because of “km/h” speed limit signs as an additional effect of metric road signs there.)
The only oddity was that the CBC reporter always said KILL-oh-meters while all of the dealership employees said kill-AH-mih-ters. No biggie in my book since Canadians are obviously miles ahead of the USA (sad pun intended 😉 when it comes to SI.
As an aside, Celsius (only) has been firmly entrenched in Canada since they converted temperature units at the same time that they converted road signs. Sadly, the UK governments have been Luddites when it comes to SI, so the road to full conversion has been a rocky one for sure (as well the road to full conversion to Celsius instead of Fahrenheit … or, heaven forfend … Centigrade).
(And let’s not talk about the USA. Sadly, we are still in the fight of our lives to restore democracy, sanity, and decency here in our federal government. SI will unfortunately have to wait a bit.)
LikeLike
@Ezra Steinberg 2019-06-03 at 01:58
Sadly our mixed muddle persists even with those normally using metric. On TV yesterday I think, a nature reserve spokesman talking about bird habitat disturbance saying ” … they may go 10 yards, 100 yards or 1 kilometer.”
Another article on BBC about the Indian mountain incident, on the morning and lunchtime news the mountain was in metres, including on the graphics. On the evening news, the same (Indian national) reporter, same report, same place but with the mountain height in feet.
LikeLike
@BrianAC the Guardian did it too today with this story: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/jun/03/caster-semenya-800m-swiss-supreme-court-ruling-iaaf
‘The surprise news – which completely blindsided athletics’ governing body – means that the Olympic champion can compete in distances ranging from 400m to a mile without medication until at least 25 June.”
That said… the “1 mile” is listed as a valid event distance (between 1500 m and 3000 m) in the IAAF rule book.
LikeLike
It’s high time so-called motoring journalists were humiliated every time they use that bastardised term, “kph”. Where’s the metre, Muppet?
And sit down for this: Auto Express actually use the term “miles/litre” as a expression to measure fuel economy. I’m not making this up.
Jack, the Japan Alps Brit
LikeLike
Jack,
The Americans are slowing trying to introduce the gallon per 100 miles because they discovered that volume per distance is a more accurate means to measure fuel consumption than fuel economy of miles per gallon. It seems as usual the metric system method of litre per 100 km was right all along.
https://engineering.mit.edu/engage/ask-an-engineer/whats-the-difference-between-fuel-efficiency-and-fuel-economy/
https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Fuel_consumption_vs_fuel_economy
As a side note, wouldn’t a change from litres per 100 kilometres to litres per megametre (L/Mm)be a much needed simplification? Not only is the unit symbol made simpler, but decimal numbers are changed to whole numbers. 3.7 L/100 km becomes 37 L/Mm.
LikeLike
Keep our UK roads in miles. Can’t stand the metric system. It annoys the heck out of me when these programmes here talk in kilometres instead of miles when we’ve always used miles on our road signs.
LikeLike
KF,
Obviously one of us is not seeing the big picture. What purpose is there to keep miles on the road? It was learned along time ago when the Commonwealth metricated that having one standard system for the whole world eliminates cost and confusion. China, using the metric system for everything has helped accelerate it to becoming the largest economy and the most technically developed.
Look what China has done just in recent months. They sent an unmanned probe to the moon to gather soil samples, even to a depth of 2 m. They developed a quantum computer, a 10 milliard times faster than the fastest computer used by Google, and they have perfected a Magnetic Confinement Fusion Reactor.
What is Britain and the US doing in any technical field where the population continues to resist metrication and clings to stone-age based units? The UK continues to sink from its one-time top position as an empire and the US is on the verged of being dethroned from its top position.
Luddites like you are a contributing factor to the economic and technical decline of the UK and the US, a decline that will never reverse and the eventual result will be both countries, like it or not, will be in forced servitude to to the new growing powers.
LikeLike
KF,
During the First World War, British and French forces had access to Belgian maps. The British artillery calculated their gun’s range in yards, but the maps were in metres. The result was a huge exercise in over-printing the Belgian maps to show an imperial grid. The War Office realised the problems that this caused and between the wars the UK was re-surveyed using a metric grid. The metric grid made much more sense than did the imperial grid – showing that Bristol is 198,000 yards due west of Greenwich does not convey much useful information, but knowing that it is 181,000 metres is quite helpful – one can see at a glance that this is 181 kilometres.
The maps that were used during the Battle of Britain had a metric grid – you can see them at the Churchill War Rooms in Whitehall. All OS maps are based on a metric grid. Since metrication started in earnest, all engineering in Britain is done using metric units – since the 1970’s British motorways have been bordered small white marker posts, each 100 metres apart, showing the distance of that point from the nominal start of the motorway. Certain parts of the country complained about the metrication program and in order to placate that part of the community, the government retained miles on road signs and car’s instrumentation. However, the numbers associated with the emergency phone system reflected the position shown on the marker posts.
At the turn of the millennium, mobile phone became far more common – people started using them, rather than roadside emergency phones to report accidents. This wrong-footed the government so, in England, driver location signs (large blue signs) were introduced every 500 metres to repeat the value of the closest marker post.
I think that this shows why the country is slowing moving over the to the metric system, but is making a real dogs breakfast of it – there is no way that the engineering industry will accept going back to using imperial units for road design, so until the public at large convert to using the metric system, it will be the metric system for the professionals and the imperial system for the peasants.
LikeLike