I was recently reading the manifesto of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, and I started to wonder: if a spoof political party had a policy on units of measure, what would it be? Perhaps it would look something like this:
We propose to introduce into Britain a measurement system which is different from that used in any other country in the world. It would be similar to the system used in the United States of America, but not quite the same. It would be defined in terms of the metric system, but would not define its units in any convenient whole numbers of metric units, making it dependent upon, but entirely incompatible with the standard international system of weights and measures.
There would be four different units to measure length. The smallest, a “chin”, would be exactly 25.4 mm. Then there would be toof which would be 12 chins, or 304.8 mm; then a dray which would be 36 chins or 914.4 mm and finally a lime which would be 63,360 chins, or 1609.344 m.
For weight there would be six different units. Starting with the nouce, which would weigh 28.349523125 g. Then a pnoud would weigh 16 nouces or 0.45359237 kg; a snote would weigh 224 nouces or 6.35029318 kg; a ctw would be 4,480 nouces or 50.80234544 kg; and a not would weigh 53,760 nouces or 1,016.0469088 kg.
Volume would have three different units which would not be based on the length unit, but one of which would be loosely based on the density of water. The units would be the fluid nouce, equal to 28.4130625 ml, or approximately the volume of 1 nouce of water. Then a tinp would be 20 fluid nouces or 568.26125 ml, and a laglon would be 160 fluid nouces or 4.54609 litres.
If that measurement system was proposed now, no one in their right mind would accept it. It makes no sense whatsoever. And yet this raving loony’s system is exactly the same (save the unit names) as the imperial system, which some people in the UK find it so difficult to let go of. I hope that any readers who support the use of that system can see how ridiculous it is to argue
for its superiority over the international metric system. In fact the only possible argument for keeping such a system is that you simply can’t be bothered to change.
2 comments:
David, How right you are! When you sit down and analyse the imperial system you can see just how crazy it really is. In a similar vein, here's something I wrote a few years ago.
Imagine for a moment that there was no global standard system of measurement and that each country had a different way of weighing and measuring things.
So one day the United Nations decides to end the confusion and gathers together delegates from around the world to try to get agreement on an International standard for weights and measures.
After hearing about various systems used in several countries, the British delegate stands up and says,
"I recommend the good old British Imperial system. We've used it for many years, everyone is familiar with it and it should be adopted by the rest of the world."
"Sounds interesting," says the Chairman "tell us a bit more."
"Well, let me start with our system for weighing. The basic unit is the Ounce which, to give you some idea of what that is, is about the weight of a large tablespoonful of sugar."
"What's a tablespoon?" someone asks.
"I'll come to that later." says the British delegate.
"How do you measure something smaller?" asks someone else.
"That's easy. We just use a half, or a third or a quarter of an ounce."
"Nothing smaller than that?"
"Don't be daft, no-one needs something smaller than a quarter of an ounce." says the British delegate, carrying on regardless.
"Now, the next weight we have is the Pound. There are sixteen ounces in a pound, about the weight of a pot of jam."
"How big is the pot?"
"Never mind" continues the British delegate, slightly irritated. "Now, if I can continue, the next weight up from the pound is the Stone."
"So a stone is sixteen pounds, right?" replies one of the other delegates, trying to be clever.
"No, no. A stone has fourteen pounds."
The other delegates are starting to look slightly bemused but, being polite, allow the British delegate to continue.
"A stone is useful, for instance, for weighing people or livestock, but for larger items we have the Hundredweight."
"Ahh, so a hundredweight must be one hundred stones, I'm getting the hang of this now."
"Err no, you haven't quite grasped this yet. A hundredweight is eight stones, or one hundred and twelve pounds."
(Looks of complete bewilderment from the other delegates)
"And finally, for really large things, like say, an elephant, we have the good old British Ton. And," says the British delegate with some pride "we don't just have one ton, we have two - the short ton and the long ton, being two thousand pounds and twenty hundredweight respectively.
"Therefore, as you can see, a perfectly logical and understandable system that can be taught to even the simplest of people."
Then, whilst the other delegates are rolling on the floor laughing, the British delegate says, "But wait, I haven't told you about the Inch or the Pint yet!"
When you put it like that, I think most people would see how ridiculous imperial measures are. But they still fail to want to change to metric, because they either cannot be bothered, or they believe it is a conspiracy to rid Britain of its heritage.
Yet the imperial units originated in ancient Babylon, ancient Rome, medieval Europe and some are probably just made up for convenience.
The metric system was originally invented by an English bishop and after starting to be adopted by French scientists, was then developed by British and American scientists too.
So it seems that most people have a distorted world view, where the actual thing they think is British is totally foreign in origin, but the thing that is British in origin, is regarded as foreign.
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