In December 2015, television weather forecasters expressed our record rainfall in millimetres while the national newspapers stubbornly stuck to inches. Apparently, the use two different measurement systems for the same phenomenon is alive and well in the UK. Ronnie Cohen looks at other aspects of British national life where two competing systems are used for measuring the same thing.
Tag: system
The Worboys Committee Report revisited
Ronnie Cohen looks back at the 1963 Worboys Committee report and reviews how well the current version of the TSRGD addresses the main criticisms of the earlier traffic signs system and the Committee’s findings and recommendations. He suggests ways that current signage can be improved to meet the Worboys ideals.
The report that led the UK from one muddle to another
On 15 July 1862, the Select Committee on Weights and Measures of the UK Parliament published a report recommending the adoption of the metric system in the UK. That was 150 years ago. It was also less than forty years after the coming into force of the Weights and Measures Act of 1824, which should have provided Britain and Ireland with ‘correct and uniform’ standards of measures. So what had gone wrong in the intervening years, and what then happened to the Committee’s recommendations?
Continue reading “The report that led the UK from one muddle to another”
Metric Views 