Weights and measures

Olivier de Montréal ViP

Member since 11 May 2005

Olivier de MontréalViP15 December 2005 16:00:18

1539

Hi everyone!

I've read an interesting article about the weights and measures.

Did you know that the European Union will refuse to import any good which is not "metric"? This should happen in 1999, but the USA were not ready and asked for more time.

So, in 2009, nothing measured in inches, feet, ounces... will be sold in Europe, even if the metric is also writen. This will oblige the USA to move along to the metric system.

I have discovered that only 3 countries in the world are not using the metric system: Liberia, Myanmar (Burma) and the USA.

Here, in Canada, the imperial system was used from the colonization to the '70s. Canadians use Km, liters, grams... but the conservative government of Brian Mulroney did not go far enough into the metric way... and I often see people speak about inches, feet, Farhenheit, pints and ounces at the same time...

Moreover because a canadian pound and a canadian gallon are not as big as a US pound and a US gallon... What a mess!

I'm not better than the others. Since I'm living here, I get used to pints (for beer),

What is the situation in your country? if you live in the USA, do you think the metric system will be used one day?

I wrote an article on this (for the french-speaking expat-blogers).

Guesposter58 Guest

Guesposter58Guest27 December 2005 23:47:02

Sounds like Canada is in a similar situation to the UK then. Not sure about the British pound (weight as opposed to Pounds Sterling currency), but the British Gallon is also different (smaller) than the US one. I suspect it's because the British and Canadian one are the same.

Britain is basically in a half-way state at the moment as well. For scientific purposes, we all use metric. Weather reports on the TV are all in degrees C (though in the summer, if it's hot, the reporter will mention what that is in farenheight). Food is all packaged as metric (but also with an imperial smallprint section).
Yet... we still use feet and inches when talking to each other about our heights, stone and pounds for peoples weights, our road signs are all in miles.

As you say, its a damn mess.

The situation here in Japan is better for general everyday life. Everything in metric after it was adopted in the 1890's (approx). The only guys who hold out a bit are the traditional carpenters who use a system based on a measurement called the 'shaku'. A shaku is about the same length as an inch in old imperial terms (which is 2.54 cm). BUT, it's broken down (or scaled up) using base 10 (rather than stupid base 12 with inches to feet). So, you can do sensible things like 10.2 shaku (or 10 shaku and 2 bu if I remember the Japanese correctly).