MV looks at the global decline of “Anglo-Saxon measures”, from dominance in 1945 to insignificance today, and draws some conclusions.
Tag: imperial measures
Metric usage by the media in Commonwealth countries
John Frewen-Lord contrasts media attitudes towards the metric changeover in Canada and Australia with those in the UK.
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Familiar with imperial? Do you know that…?
Miles, yards, feet and inches, pints, pounds and stones. Yes, fifty years after the UK embarked on the metric transition, we still need to be familiar with some of those old units. In this article, Ronnie Cohen looks at some of the less well known and largely forgotten features of the imperial system.
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The Grand National’s unhelpful measurements
The race has been run. Pictures and commentary have been broadcast around the world, and millions will have formed an impression of Britain in 2013. Ronnie Cohen asks if more could have been made of this opportunity to publicise UK plc.
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The 1895 Select Committee on weights and measures
This article looks back to the findings and recommendations of the 1895 Parliamentary Select Committee on weights and measures.
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1862 report from the Select Committee on weights and measures
The question of adopting metric measures in the UK is not a new proposition; in 1862 Parliament’s Select Committee on Weights and Measures considered the matter and came down firmly in favour of metrication. A century and a half later, we are still waiting for the government to finally complete the job. The full report can be read here. A summary follows:
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A trip to the Imperial Scrapyard
When consulting a reference book from 1896, we came across an article about imperial measures which provides a timely reminder that, even in its heyday, this ‘system’ was not as straightforward as some would now have us believe.
Thinking of buying a fridge?
A recent survey of their web sites leads us to speculate on where retailers see themselves: most plump for the present, but a few appear to favour the last century.
A better use of multiples?
To ease the transition to metric measures, straight substitution of units is often used – kg for pounds, metres for yards, km for miles and so on. Ronnie Cohen argues that, as a result, we fail to take advantage of metric’s superiority in dealing with a range of numbers, including the very large (and small).
Marathon myth
With the London Marathon being run today, it is timely to remember the metric origins of the marathon, and to puncture the myth that it is a race measured in imperial units.
Metric Views 