Imperial units are now defined in terms of metric. At the request of industry, President of Board of Trade announces that the metric system will be adopted with a target of completion within 10 years i. Metrication Board established. However Board restricted to providing information and not permitted to promote benefits of the metric system. British currency decimalised. The much-feared changeover proved to be well organised and smooth.
Massive Government information campaign to prepare the public for change. Most Commonwealth countries have completed metric conversion. Britain lags behind significantly. UK regulations require packaged goods sold in Britain to be labelled in metric units.
Negligible information provided to public. The education system starts moving to metric units following the publication of guidance by the Department of Education and Science DES. The agreed timetable for the metric changeover in the construction industry is published.
International paper sizes begin to replace old favourites such as foolscap, quarto and letter. The UK Hydrographic Office begins a programme of modernisation of nautical charts and conversion of depth readings into metres — the scales of charts are already decimal. These are that SI should be used in journals in preference to Imperial, CGS or metric technical units, and that the changeover should be made as quickly as possible. The DES arranges several conferences to consider the consequences moves in the education system towards metric units.
On 28 May, the Metrication Board holds its first meeting under the chairmanship of scientist and broadcaster Lord Ritchie Calder. There is a change of Government, and in October the House of Commons debates metrication. The Building Regulations are reissued in metric units to match progress in the building industry. Metric measurements are given on clothing labels. The International Rugby Football Board announces that from all measurements in the game will be metric, for example the 25 yard line will become the 22 metre line and the 5 yard line will become the 5 metre line.
Other voluntary retail initiatives include the pricing of floor covering and carpet in metric. Metrication of carpet sales enters into a full-scale reverse. It is realised, belatedly, that a voluntary approach to the retail changeover does not work. Retail associations press the government for cut-off dates for imperial pricing of a wide range of products. The Government delay seeking Parliamentary approval for further orders relating to metrication. It would not be until that these orders would finally be approved.
The UK Metrication Board is abolished. At that time, it could hardly have been foreseen that arguments would continue and the transition to metric measures drag on for a further twenty years and still counting.
In the final part of the UK metric time line, to be posted in the future, we shall see increasing European co-operation highlighted when the Airbus A enters service, the impact of globalisation with three Japanese volume car manufacturers setting up metric production lines in Britain, the imperial gallon redefined in metric terms, renewed political controversy and of course erratic progress with the metric transition.
Thanks to all those who made suggestions with a view to improving the time line. These will be incorporated before it is copied to the UKMA web site. How very true this was. Now remind us again how much not going fully metric is costing us. Tell us again how much it would cost to go fully metric. Alas, still lessons cannot be learnt. Well, a lot of difference between scheduled replacement and forced compliance replacement.
Like Like. The UK was not formed in The Kingdom of Great Britain was. The conference also included national lab directors of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa, and the compromise value was apparently suggested by Canada. I think it is at least worth noting the other four countries party to the agreement. While poorly realized, they agree within about 0. Irrelevant photo: A rose. By any other name. One anti- group argues for the inherent logic of feet and inches because the foot divides so neatly into quarters.
England emerged from the Dark Ages into the Middle Ages with a rich collection of measurements. I could turn the whole post blue with Britannica links but one will get you into the general vicinity. You can to explore from there if you want it all. The furlong started out as the length of a plowed furrow—a distance that would have varied from place to place and field to field.
The rod varied from nine to twenty-eight feet and was sometimes called a perch or a pole. An acre was the area that a yoke of oxen pulling a wooden plow could plow in one day.
Predictably enough, that varied too. Or possibly your average English aristocrat, who would have been better fed and probably taller, with a longer stride. How big was a foot just then? Funny you should ask. They were using the Germanic foot, which was bigger than the foot England adopted a little later, under Elizabeth, which meant the mile changed to 5, feet.
Maybe Liz had small feet. The Irish mile was 6, feet and the Scottish mile was 5, feet. Meanwhile, Cornwall was working with a whole different set of measurements. The mile was 16, The Cornish bushel was three Winchester bushels, or 18 gallons, and used for barley, wheat, and potatoes.
The what bushel? The Winchester bushel was a royal standard, named after the capital of tenth-century England, where Edgar the Peaceable kept a royal bushel to measure other bushels against.
Edgar is also notable for having divorced an Elfleda to marry an Elfrida. The Winchester bushel is just a point of reference—a rare standard measurement in an unstandardized time. The Cornish apple gallon was seven pounds, although a plain old gallon was ten pounds.
The Cornish pound was eighteen ounces but that seems to have applied only if you were measuring butter. The warp was four fish. The burn was twenty-one fish. The mease was five hundred and five herrings. No one was around to enforce it, and over the years various gestures were made in the direction of standardization.
In the sixteenth century, the rod was defined as the length of the left feet of sixteen men lined up heel to toe as they emerged from church.
That was easiest to measure on a Sunday unless you wanted to assemble and choreograph the crowd yourself. Or leaving a church. Do feet change size during church services? That was—I suppose we should have guessed this—meant as a way to memorize the length of the rod, not as a standard for it. In , John Wilkins, a founder of the Royal Society, was still calling for standardized measurements and added that units should increase by a factor of ten and create some simple relationship between length and volume.
In , England celebrated its union with Scotland by imposing the English measuring system on Scotland. The British Imperial System was created by a law passed in and again in , which may speak to the effectiveness of the first one. Anything before was an English unit, and anything after was an Imperial unit. The Imperial gallon now held the same amount whether it was full of wine, ale, wheat, or dog sick.
The yard and the pound were standardized. The rod and the chaldron you measured coal with that were abolished. So was lining up heel to toe after church. The system was eminently sensible: A pound weighed a pound. A stone weighed fourteen pounds. A hundredweight weighed a hundred and twelve pounds—and still does.
The U. This leaves us with not just a ton but a short ton and a long ton, a short hundredweight which, unfathomably, weighs a hundred pound and a long hundredweight. The troy pound is used for precious metals and jewels.
Because why should you have one pound when you can have three? Troy pounds have 12 ounces to the pound, 20 pennyweight to the ounce, and 24 grains to the pennyweight. Skip forward, then, to the twentieth century, when the metric system was sneaking into Britain by way of scientists and businesspeople.
One group liked to have measurement-related conversations with colleagues from countries that already used the metric system and the other group exported to those countries. Assorted committees and politicians talked about introducing the metric system but then looked down the barrel of history, heritage, and the tabloid newspapers and lost their nerve. Until , when the government announced a ten-year program during which the country would shift over voluntarily.
Goals were set. Measures were recalibrated. Change was encouraged. Eventually, Britain would shift to the metric system and everyone would be happy. You had hard metrication, where the size of standard objects changed. You had soft metrication, where the object stayed the same but was measured in a new language. And you had viagra metrication, where the user needed a bit of help to toggle between soft and hard metrication.
Service stations changed over more or less by accident. Above that level, they spoke metric and only metric. Land is measured in acres. In pubs, cider and beer on tap or draught if you speak British are still sold in imperial units, but wine, whiskey, rum, and all their friends and relations are sold in metric units. Which makes perfect sense to a country that invented the gill, the scruple, and the minim. And even though Britain still sells petrol or gas by the liter, it measures fuel efficiency in miles per gallon.
British politics and trade became more deeply integrated into Europe and a deadline was set for Britain to go metric. But by , metrication had stalled. Britain asked for a later date for the shift to the metric system. Then it asked for a later date than that. Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who was the not-happiest of all? Why, the retail industry was the not-happiest of all, and eventually the postponements came to an end. They weighed their produce on scales that used only the Imperial System and posted their prices only in pounds and ounces.
Let it be the same with weights as with measures. An ell is a measure used only for cloth. No one knows quite what halberget is, which seems appropriate. The defeat of the Metric Martyrs brought Britain fully into its current ideal and semi-metric chaos. It was a tad confusing growing up here. Like Liked by 3 people. The currency would have defeated me.
Oh, I still get confused. I love this. Can I reblog it? Like Liked by 1 person. Absolutely, but if you have trouble making the link work, give it a day or two. Though I think it may be my issue I can reblog from my journey through life site to my reasons to live but not vice versa. I really loved it…. I appreciate you wanting to reblog it. You can always just copy a paragraph or two and embed a link. I hope they can sort it out…. You always make me smile, so thanks for writing :.
Which you have to admire for its simplicity. Like Like. We learned early so it was easy enough…but surprising how many found decimalisation difficult after pounds, shillings and pence. Like Liked by 2 people. I remember when it all changed over in Unfortunately I still only understand stones not kilos and miles not kilometres.
Great post! Must have been something in the conversion. WP has finally allowed me to release your comment from Comment Hell. Thanks for the reblog and sorry to leave you stranded for so long. I shared this on Facebook. I know my weight in kilos, but not pounds. Once, when being prepared for a medical procedure, I was asked my weight. I get weighed for a different medical procedure, and the scale measures in kilos.
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