Should Canada return to Imperial Measurements.
- Thread starter B00Mer
- Start date
As a farmer it is worse, I use both systems depending on what I am doing. It is too late to
go back now, we should just curse the name of those who brought it in.
go back now, we should just curse the name of those who brought it in.
As I recall the US was going to convert the same time we did but for some reason, probably politics they bailed at the last minute. Too bad really. For 40 years I have had to lug 2 sets of tools around. WOrse much US stuff is hybrid. Nearly everything on my truck is metric except the brake lines. Go figure.
Yeah, I find a lot of machinery is hybrid, I need both metric and Imperial tools if I'm going to do anything to a lawnmower, a snowblower, stationary power tools, a car, the furnace, and it's made worse by the fact that some metric and Imperial sizes are almost exactly the same. A 5/8" bolt head, for instance, is just a hair under 16 mm. Adjustable wrenches sure come in handy.
My old shop teacher would kick us if he caught us using an adjustable wrench, there were two in the school issued kits, a big one and a little one, both were forbidden He was educated in a German work camp in Serbia. I have always worked with both systems, I prefer the metric.
LOL I hear ya there.. I'm having a hell of a time.. I have to convert back to Ferinheight to know what the temp is outside..
To me 7C or 3C means absolutely nothing to me... you say 96F man that's nice and hot, say 63F I weather a sweater, 43F holy crap, it's getting cold out their..
Really? I'm 68 and have little or no difficulty thinking in both systems, but I much prefer metric. Working in units of ten is vastly easier than working in units of 12, 32, 1760, 5280, etc. And with units of rods, chains, gallons, gills, bushels, fathoms, etc.
I have no idea what the number is now, but a few decades ago an economist estimated that using the archaic system of measurement the US now uses cost its economy billions. I expect the number might be even higher now. And there is another side to not using metric, and that is that millions of Americans are forced to learn two systems of measurement in order to operate in the international marketplace and participate in the scientific community. Let's face it, the boffins in US high tech industries don't use non-metric measurements in the workplace and they haven't for decades.
I think the reason we went metric in the first place was because, a) gas pumps only had two digits for the price, and when gas went over $1 / gal you had to halve the price and double the total of fuel pumped, which led to some disputes of legality, and, b) since Trudeau promised roll back Joe Clark's tax increases and not increase them, but he did it in spades within 9 months of getting voted back in as PM anyway, gas price increases of a few pennies a litre were easier to sell. And, c) its a French thing.
We can't even have one standard on one thing; I had to change a wheel bearing on my Chevy urban assault vehicle, 5/8" bolts held the unit on but the main hub nut was 36mm...huh? Yes, I had to go an buy that socket for just that purpose, and it was a 1/2" drive BTW.
Metric isn't necessarily that accurate either, 9mm ammunition comes in bullet diameters ranging from .356" - .358", small bullets don't engage the rifling and "fly" sideways.
The Celsius scale has only 100 degrees between freezing and boiling, the farenheit scale has 180. A temperature and dewpoint of, say 0C, doesn't indicate there will be fog or frost because the temperature may be 33F with a dewpoint of 31F. Decimals of degrees don't normally enter the public domain, but a temperature dewpoint spread of a degree and a half or two F can make quite a difference in forecasting fog, frost, or both.
No country in the free world is exclusively metric or Imperial. The US measure of volume isn't Imperial either, an Imp gallon of water weighs 10 lb, a US gallon is closer to 8.32 lb. Of course that wasn't a tough obsacle to overcome until we, along with other countries started adopting the metric system. That threw a whole bunch more conversion tables into the mix. It is the prime reason Air Canada's 767 FIN#604 ended up with half its required fuel load and deadsticked into Gimli. In a world almost exclusively Imperial, (with a small mix of US measurements) a crew was left to calculate litres to kilos but used the litres to pounds numbers instead, an easy mistake to make given the circumstances. Imperial weights are pretty much standard in the industry on this side of the pond; altitudes are in feet, distances are in feet or nautical miles, (except ground visibilities are measured in statute miles) everywhere in the free world, not confusing enough until you start throwing metric into the mix too.
We can't even have one standard on one thing; I had to change a wheel bearing on my Chevy urban assault vehicle, 5/8" bolts held the unit on but the main hub nut was 36mm...huh? Yes, I had to go an buy that socket for just that purpose, and it was a 1/2" drive BTW.
Metric isn't necessarily that accurate either, 9mm ammunition comes in bullet diameters ranging from .356" - .358", small bullets don't engage the rifling and "fly" sideways.
The Celsius scale has only 100 degrees between freezing and boiling, the farenheit scale has 180. A temperature and dewpoint of, say 0C, doesn't indicate there will be fog or frost because the temperature may be 33F with a dewpoint of 31F. Decimals of degrees don't normally enter the public domain, but a temperature dewpoint spread of a degree and a half or two F can make quite a difference in forecasting fog, frost, or both.
No country in the free world is exclusively metric or Imperial. The US measure of volume isn't Imperial either, an Imp gallon of water weighs 10 lb, a US gallon is closer to 8.32 lb. Of course that wasn't a tough obsacle to overcome until we, along with other countries started adopting the metric system. That threw a whole bunch more conversion tables into the mix. It is the prime reason Air Canada's 767 FIN#604 ended up with half its required fuel load and deadsticked into Gimli. In a world almost exclusively Imperial, (with a small mix of US measurements) a crew was left to calculate litres to kilos but used the litres to pounds numbers instead, an easy mistake to make given the circumstances. Imperial weights are pretty much standard in the industry on this side of the pond; altitudes are in feet, distances are in feet or nautical miles, (except ground visibilities are measured in statute miles) everywhere in the free world, not confusing enough until you start throwing metric into the mix too.
When it comes to temperature I prefer the current system. Its just in the last year or so that I've started to understand how F works. I never really looked into it. When it comes to measuring other things I generally prefer Imperial. Probably because thats what I was taught at home before school taught me the Metric stuff. I have no idea how many kilograms I weigh but I know the pounds. I also dont know how tall I am in centemetres, but I know it in feet and inches. Most of my friends near my age are a bit of a mix of both systems as well.
Either way I doubt we'll ever go back. Not unless most of the world starts heading in that direction.
Did they surrender again ? 8O
Used to work in a lab. Of course everything was metric. Damn handy. The conversion is no problem. Just like thinking in French, (if you speak French)
50 Kilometers.........not far.
500 Kilometers........far
1 cm...............not big
1,000,000 cm................big (long too)
see?..........easy.;-)
When Trudeau, the idiot embarked on this nonsense about 1974 his rationale was that we are trading countries that are metric (a misnomer since our largest trading partner wasn't metric) we had to go that way to so when we had people ladling out flour etc, they would be competent are getting the weight right or the people cutting lumber would get the lengths right. The ironic part is lumber is still quoted in imperial dimensions as are the nails and screws it is fastened with. The temperature in imperial was never a problem, but nothing would do that we had to buy new thermometers. As for the rationale about the number 10 being magic, if it is so f**King magic why weren't the clocks and calendars changed?
Yes, but not on the highways or at the pumps. I remember quite well because I was a gas jockey at the time, we were selling gas at around $.709 to $.759 per gallon, (which was about a nickel more than anyone else). I can't remember if that was before or after Joe's tax hikes, which were modest by today's standards. By the time I left that job we were back into the Trudeau realm and still hadn't converted the pumps to metric, we were charging $.569 / gal and charging double what the total was. Telling a guy that he owed $27 when the total read $13.50 led to more than a couple angry outbursts, even when a sign on the pump indicated that this was the procedure.
Not just your age, I think everyone is a mix of both systems. When it comes to weight or height, I'm the same as you. When it comes to temperature I'd have to convert from F to C to understand the meaning.
In this regard I'm wondering if all provinces switched over at the same time. I have two distinct recollections, my first encounter with gas over $1 a gallon was at Chetwynd B.C. in July 1977 when it was $1.016 and the second was when it reached $0.25 per litre.
We could go even farther and change the whole cartography and navigation system, let's see; clocks are 24 hrs or 12 hours X 2, the time it takes for full rotation of the earth. The earth's circumference is 24,000 nm thereabouts, okay 24,000nm X 1.15 = 27,600sm = 44,400km give or take. Wait. a metric clock would have, what, 10 hours or 20? Hmmm... Maybe I'm thinking this backwards, instead of 360 degrees, would we have 100 or 200 degrees for metric lat and long? My brain hurts already.
And getting back to basics the metre was adopted as at the time it was calculated to be 1/10 millionth of the dist. from the equator to the pole, but that was found later to be in error, so it was changed to a distance between two marks on a metal bar in Paris, but that wasn't good enough for long so now it's based on some formula involving such nonsense as the colour of light at a certain temp. (Can't remember the details of that one at all, and can't really see my future depending upon knowing it!) -
