7-percent:Let’s Talk about Measurementsarwamachine posted a question:Ihad assumed that since the UK

7-percent:Let’s Talk about Measurementsarwamachine posted a question:Ihad assumed that since the UK uses the metric system, distances were describedin meters/kilometers, but it seems that they are still expressed in miles. Isthat correct? Related,how are smaller distances described? For example, if something is across theroom from me, would I say 20 feet away or 6 meters away? Is a penis 6 incheslong or 15 centimeters long?The short answer is that it all depends on one’s age or rather, then ageof one’s characters. Because Britain’s relationship with the metric system?It’s complicated, as FB would say. Measuringanything in Britain is a lesson in muddling. And how the history of theseisland nations has been complicated by its weird relationship with the Europeancontinent.Toquote just two of the comments made on @arwarmachine’s original post: @doloresmctushIt’s interchangeableand there’s an utterly impenetrable layer of logic. You measure people in feetand inches, rooms in metres, really fucking heavy things in kilos but people instones. Some recipes are in grams but anything your mum tells you is in ounces. @bumblie-beeHmm so a 25 year oldscientist, it definitely depends not just on age but on the situation. Likeheight of a person is in feet and inches, a building would be in meters,distance walked would be in meters but driven would be in miles. I know myweight in stone and pounds but prefer to use kilos, baking is done in grammesexcept when I’m making a cake when the two ounces to an egg rule sets in! Soyeah, it’s complicated!Whatwas amusing about the comments is that there is no agreement about what ismeasured in what, except that we all measure dicks in inches, LOL.So,how did we get in such a mess? The answer is because of history. Forthree hundred and eighty years (between 32 and 412 AD) Britain was occupied bythe Romans, and what records were kept used the measurements of the Romanempire, which included the Roman “Pound” and their “Mile”(the last of these was ‘mille passus’ or one thousand passus; one passus is twopaces of a Roman legionary soldier). Thesame mile was used in the rest of the Roman Empire, too.Over thenext six hundred and fifty years, Britain was invaded and settled byAnglo-Saxon tribes and the Danes, who brought their own measurements, one ofwhich is still in use today: the furlong which is used to describe the distanceof horse races. It’s 220 yards in today’s distances. God knows why; you’d thinkit would be more relevant for water distances, given the invasions came by sea.There was a mess in the UK, with some bits using the Danes’ versions; others theAngles, and still others cling to Roman measures, while the Celts in Cornwall,Wales and Scotland are busy doing their own thing. Anyone remember a time whenathletic events in the USA were a 220 yard distance? Now you know why. In965AD there is the first ever English law on weights and measures that tries toestablish one agreed system based on “the Winchester measures”, the10th-century Saxon king called Edgar the Peaceable kept a royal bushel measureand quite possibly others. Butit only lasts until 1066 when William the Conqueror arrives with his Normanideas about how to measure and weigh everything, so agreement goes out of thewindow. Again. In fact, the Normans allow the peasants to do their own thingwhile also introducing continental measures like the ounce. The Magna Carta in1215 tried to say there should be one system, but everyone just laughed andcarried on confusing each other. Traders learned to deal with conversions. Fourteenth-century statutesrecorded a yard (perhaps based originally on a rod or stick) of 3 feet,each foot containing 12 inches, each inch equal to the length ofthree barleycorns (and what, you ask, is a barleycorn?) The barleycorn is aformer English unit of length equal to ​1⁄3 of an inch (i.e.about 8.47 mm). It is still used as the basis of shoe sizes in English-speakingcountries. In1400, British ships engaging other seafaring nations adopted what was in useelsewhere, so a fathom was adopted for depths; 100 fathoms was a cable; tencables was a nautical mile and one knot was the speed of one nautical mile perhour. A sort of decimalisation of the sea, but is not the same as a mile onland (one nautical miles is 1.15078 land miles). Did you know that airplanesuse nautical miles? Yeah, because it’s related to the circumference of theearth and it is one minute of latitude.In1620 the English complicate land measurements more by introducing the conceptof links and chains, relating to furlongs. A chaincomprising one hundred links added up to a total length of one tenth of afurlong (22 yards). And believe it or not, there is still in the parishcouncils of England, a person who is called the “linksman” who… measuresstuff and who is called upon to decide disputes over boundaries betweenproperties. And then there is the rod, standardised by the Tudors. Nowadays, arod is five and a half yards or sixteen and a half feet, and it was defined by“the length of the left feet of 16 men lined up heel to toe as they emergedfrom church.” The acre shows up now too, which is 4,840 square yards, notto be confused by the “hectare” which is a metric measurement. Anacre is about 0.405 hectare and one hectare contains about2.47 acres.The scientific developments of the Age ofEnlightenment brought some interesting changes to how scientists measured stuff(but not generally speaking the population at large). One notable change in1707 is that the Act of Union meant that the English required the Scots to playby their rules, and not what had been the norm north of the border. Almost acentury later The UK was created by the Act of Union of Great Britain and Ireland.Irish measures are unaffected, however; they got to keep their versions.Bythe mid-19th century, the British Imperial weights and measures werestandardised and in use throughout the empire (so India, Australia, NZ etc). So,pounds, ounces, stones. The pound however had two versions- the “troypound” which was used to measure metals until the 1878, but it’s still inuse today in the jewellery trade and the avoirdupois pound, for othergoods sold by weight. A fun fact— The standard pound and the standardyard (actual measures in metal made by the Government) were destroyed when theHouses of Parliament burnt down in 1834. Now some fun facts about why British and American weights andmeasures differ. While the British were reformingtheir weights and measures in the 19th century, the Americans were justadopting units based on those discarded by the act of 1824. The standard U.S.gallon is based on the Queen Anne era's wine gallon of 231 cubic inchesand is about 17 percent smaller than the British imperial gallon. The U.S.bushel of 2,150.42 cubic inches, derived from the Winchester bushel abandonedin Britain, is approximately 3 percent smaller than the British imperialbushel. In the British system, units of dry and liquid capacity are the same,while in the United States they differ; the liquid and dry pint in Britainboth equal 0.568 cubic decimetre, while the U.S. liquid pint is 0.473 cubicdecimetre, and the U.S. dry pint is 0.551 cubic decimetre. At least British and Americanunits of linear measure and weights are essentially the same. Notable exceptionsare the British stone of 14 pounds, which is not used in the UnitedStates, and a divergence in definition of the hundredweight (100 pounds in theUnited States, 112 in Britain) that yields two different tons, the short U.S.ton of 2,000 pounds and the long British ton of 2,240 pounds. Still with me? Okay, now onto what the rest ofthe world was doing. AKA the metric system. Until 1964, The Brits pretendedthat they still ruled the world and counted things the way they wanted to measure.A the turn of the century in 1900 it was legal to use metric in the country,but few people did. However, some things started to change; eg the OrdnanceSurvey started measuring things on maps in meters and kilometres as well as inyards and miles. SOMETHING IMPORTANT justhappened. Did you notice? It’s not “centimeters, kilometers, millimeters”.Not in Britain; spelling is centimetres, kilometres, millimetres. A bit likecentre…. The r comes before the e. That’s important for fanfic writers. (OhGod, another Britpick post – this one on spelling)Let’s talk about weather andtemperatures. In 1961, the UK Met Office switched internally from Fahrenheit toCelsius, which had been adopted by the World Meteorological Organisation as thestandard unit for temperature measurement. Over the next five years, weatherreports in newspapers, TV and radio started using both. By the 1970s, it was Celsius.For a while lots of Brits mistakenly called it “centigrade”. Now, noone uses Fahrenheit (except the Americans, who are still in a time warp). From 1963 to 1965, measuresstarted to convert to metric systems, slowly, often with both being displayed. Inthe 70s, 80s and 90s you could still get things at a butcher or green grocer inpounds and ounces. Mrs Hudson will definitely be a “pounds andounces” woman. Sherlock is a chemist and would have gone to metric fromthe start but be able to calculate instantly between it and all the old Englishweights and measures. The military went metric too, so John thinks metric firstfor some things (but not all). Beer in a pub is still bought by the pint andhalf pint and that will never change, even if it’s bought by the publican in metricliquid kegs. The UK joined the EU, which eventuallybullies the Brits into stopping the legal use of pounds, ounces and pints onall food items (which infuriates the English). Now that Brexit has happened, Iwouldn’t be surprised if dual labelling returns. In 1971, the UK currency wentdecimal, too. No more pounds, shillings and pence; no more guineas. A pound was100 pence; ten pounds was a tenner and so on. In 1973, the UK agreed to“go metric” and the system was taught in schools. So John andSherlock would have been raised in a Britain to think metric, but not to forgetwhat had gone before. So, what is “legal” is not always that is usedin “practice”. People will measure rooms in feet and inches, peoplewill measure height in feet and inches. All road signs show distances in miles not kilometres.All speed limits are in miles not kilometres. Speedometers in cars made inBritain have to have both miles and Kms. Recipes are often printed with bothmetric and British measures. I still use a teaspoon and a tablespoon as opposedto grams. My kitchen scales have both measures. Rulers and tape measures haveboth. Measuring jugs have pints and litres. Clothing sizes? A total shambles.Most clothes sold in Britain will be in British sizes (I am a size 12 dresssize in the UK; a size 8 or 10 in the USA; I am a 5.5 shoe size (38 euro size)in Britain, and a 7.5 in the USA). Chest sizes for both men and women are donein inches, not cms.Scientists will think in metric; old housewives will think in British imperial measures. Teenagers will think metric more than older people. But they all will get the need to translate when they are thinking. So the muddle continues! But, whateveranyone else says, I have never, ever heard anyone in Britain measure a dick in millimetres. -- source link

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