Imperial or metric?

[HareBrain]

20 shillings to a pound or 14 pounds to a stone

So there are 280 shillings to a stone?

 

[RVM45]

I hate; loath and despise the Metric system.

In several of my stories, a character uses the expression, "Don't talk Metric to me!" in the same way we'd say "Don't talk Bull-Feces to me!"

In this age of computers and calculators, any past justification to bulldoze over traditional means of measurement and thought, because decimal is easier, has surely outlived its usefulness.

When I'm reading a story, and the author gives his measurements in Metric, it gets the same momentary Anti-PC Snarl that I give the faddish writer who insists on saying "She", when the standard English 2nd person generic is-has been -always will be--"He".

As for the Duodecimal system--has anyone ever contrived to create a satisfactory system of a consonant phonetic system to go with base 12--for
mnemonic purposes?

I think mnemonic systems may become increasingly important in the future--and its hard to imagine any base 12 one working anywhere near as well as the base 10 system.

.....RVM45

 

[Peter Graham]

Hello, newbie here, so I thought I'd kick off with a question. My magnum opus is about a bunch of scientist types settling on a new planet in the late 21st/early 22nd century. I've been dithering on what units of measurement to use.

It's your decision, but scientists are real people (some of them, at least - the rest just quip in binary and get excited about the periodic table) and so they will speak with real voices.

As one poster said, there is a difference between colloquial use of language and scientific use of language - and many people can flick between the two.

In Britain we still use some imperial measurements, even though we should have stopped many years ago. This has thrown up a few anomalies:-

1. Beer and spirits are measured in imperial (pints, half pints and gills) but wine is measured in metric (a pub glass is 125ml or 250ml for a "large one").

2. Distance is measured in miles, but shorter distances are frequently rendered in metric - "go up there for about four miles and park at the post box. It's about thirty metres from there on the right hand side."

3. Sport uses imperial measurements in horse racing, but metric for footy (I think).

4. Height and weight for individuals is measured in imperial ("I'm 6'1" and weigh 13 stone") but for stuff is usually in metric ("A kilo bag of sugar, please").

5. Drugs are imperial for cannabis ("how much for an eighth, mate?"), but metric for powder ("a gramme of whizz, if you would be so good, my fine fellow!").

Some of this stuff - pints and miles especially - is so ingrained that I doubt we will ever stop using it, whatever the hordes of evil, heath and safety obsessed, banana-straightening drones in Brussels may have to say on the matter.

I think we have effectively done away with about 75% of imperial, but what is left is here to stay.

So, if you are using UK or even US characters, I think you need to reflect this - both in characterisation and perhaps also in narrative voice.

Regards,

Peter

 

[gadgetmind]

There are two sides to the metric system.

1) Use of a single unit and prefixes that indicate the decimal multiple or fraction. To limit the number of prefixes, each covers a 10^3 range. So, the unit of length is the metre, below this we have the millimetre, and above the kilometer.
2) Rather than being arbitrary, the units are coherent, so equations tends to work without using lots of odd constants. While this can be done with non-metric (non-SI) units, they aren't ones people tend to be familiar with. For instance, f=ma works with force in pounds, and acceleration in ft/s^2, but you have to measure mass in slugs. Of course, you could instead measure the force in poundals.

Poundal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So, if you're doing SF, and want engineers to have convincing dialogue, they can either use a coherent imperial system (and be incomprehensible to lay people everywhere) or use the metric system and risk sounding all foreign to certain other groups.

However, it could be fun to write a book in this style.

"That ship ... I thought the gravimeter was wrong at first, but I've checked and rechecked ... its mass is over a million slugs!"

or

"It's still pulling us in - we need more thrust! Get those engines turned up to at least a milliard poundals, or we won't stand a chance!"

Ian
P.S. "milliard" comes from the days of UK "long scale", when a billion was 10^12 and we needed some other way of denoting 10^9.

 

[Ursa major]

To the best of my knowledge, they still use milliards (Milliarde, Milliarden) in Germany.

According to Wiki, the UK government switched to the short scale as recently as 1974. I'm sure I read (decades ago) that UK newspapers made this change in the late 1920s or thereabouts.

 

[Dave]

Just to add that a website I found for reporting highway problems to local councils, actually needs to explain on their website why they use kilometres instead of miles - they get so many rude emails about it; more than on any other subject, from people complaining that it is somehow un-British. And their reason - quite simply that the British national grid reference system, devised by Ordnance Survey (the British national mapping agency) uses eastings and northings measured in metres and kilometres, and it has done since around the time of the Second World War!

As an alternative, you could always devise you own systems of measurements i.e. 5 Tentacles high and 3 Wings long, weighing 50 Bricks, with a volume of 10 Space Helmets. Well, you get the idea!

 

[R M Tobias]

Yeah but I think thats a generational thing, we changed over well within living memory, but as time goes on the younger ones will relate less and less to Imperial terms. I was taught Metric at school but had to understand a certain amount of Imperial in order to communicate with my parents, who grew up with imperial and never entirely converted. My nephews and nieces have less of a need to use or relate to Imperial - their world is metric, their parents are mostly metric with a smattering of imperial, so a smattering is all they need. What will their kids be like?

Yes but are you writing a technical manual or fiction aimed at readers who live and breath in the early 21st century.

 

[Vertigo]

So there are 280 shillings to a stone?

Precisely!

 

[Pyan]

If you want to be amazed at how anything actually got done, have a look at this:

English weights and measures: Home page

Acres, bushels, chains, chalders, chaldrons, crowns, customary measures, drachms, drams, farthings, fathoms, feet, florins, foolscap, furlongs, gallons, gills, grains, groats, guineas, hundredweights, lasts, leagues, miles, minims, nails, ounces, pecks, pennyweights, pints, poles, perchs, pounds, quarts, quarters, rods, roods, sacks, scruples, stones, tods, tons, troy ounces, wire gauges, weys and yards - you will find them all here!

 

[chrispenycate]

Older measures hang on long after they are no longer official, because they were practical ways of doing a job, and developed as such (unfortunately, things like ounces were practical for several trades, and ended up as different measures in each).

In a French boulangerie you can still buy a livre of pain (not a book, silly, a pound; it's where the "L" in the £ symbol came from. Interesting that the Italian lira was once the same value.) despite the weight having gone out during the revolution, and a builder will often measure in "pouces" (thumbs, ie inches).

And my niece in law completely failed in her first attempt to bring cookies to the benighted British, as her recipe involved "cups" of ingredients, rather than ccs or grams, and the English teacup is not the same as it's American equivalent. She had to have an emergency set of stateside measures (cups, spoons and the like) shipped across so she could regain her confidence in the kitchen.

And even pennyweights and grains would shift in value over the decades, with a grandmother handing on her precious cookbooks (hand written) the scales and the official cup and spoon to her designated successor…

 

[Dozmonic]

Metric. But imperial can be used for colloquialisms and not scientific measurements.

I live in Australia where we are thoroughly entrenched in the metric system yet when talking about someone's height in a non scientific matter its often imperial.

"He's at least six foot" being an example.

also

"It's miles away" rather then "It's kilometers away"

etc

It's the same over here in the UK. I wouldn't walk by someone and go, "cor blimey that fella was going on 1 metre 90 don't ya know!". We give heights relative to ourselves, "this much taller/shorter" or guessing "around 6 foot."

As long as they're drinking pints of beer it's a sane time to live.

 

[gadgetmind]

As long as they're drinking pints of beer it's a sane time to live.

I'll drink to that!

While 0.5l is about the same as a puny US pint, it's 12% down on a proper British pint, and I know which I'd rather have in my hand on a hot day!

Ian

 

[Vladd67]

I'll drink to that!

While 0.5l is about the same as a puny US pint, it's 12% down on a proper British pint, and I know which I'd rather have in my hand on a hot day!

Ian

Or any day

 

[chrispenycate]

Ah, but you can always do it right and take a proper litre stein.

Although it does get a bit heavy around the third refill.

 

[Vladd67]

When I was in the Sealed Knot and we used to hit the pubs in 17th century kit a lot of us used pewter tankards, you'd ask for a pint hand over your tankard and it was amazing how many bar staff would just fill them up. The fact mine held 6 gills or a pint and a half seemed to pass a lot of them by. Of course older more experienced staff would fill up a pint glass and then pour it into the tankard.

 

[Pyan]

We used to do something similar - we'd drink to just below half way down a tall pint glass, and then ask for "another half in here, please", and hand it to the barmaid - who'd fill it up to the top again. We measured it one day, and it turns out that you get two thirds of a pint charged as a half, because of the shape of the glass...

Didn't know you were in the Peeled Nuts, Vladd: Civil War, isn't it?

 

[Vladd67]

Didn't know you were in the Peeled Nuts, Vladd: Civil War, isn't it?

Yep I was in Prince Rupert's Blew Regiment of Foote or Blewcoats,used to spend the odd weekends running round a field with a musket a burning match and a flask of gunpowder, then a few drinks in a local pub or beer tent. Maybe when the kids are older we will do it again, it's where I met the wife.

 

[gadgetmind]

One fine day, several years ago, we went for a walk in our local park. During said walk we encountered, 1) Friar tuck marrying Maid Marian to Robin Hood while the Sheriff's men charged around in the undergrowth, 2) A pair of dodgy looking guys burying to bicycle.

Of course, this was the one time we hadn't taken a camera.

Ian

 

[Jennifer Kirk]

When writing fantasy fiction, I made up my own system of measurements. I mean, in universe far, far away would they really have tentacled things arguing about metres versus yards? I then proceded to mention measurements as little as possible, which seemed the best way.

In SF, I use both metric and imperial, and again avoid any need to use either unless I absolutely need to. Who knows - in the year 2828 maybe mankind will have some new system of measurements based on the speed of quarks in a vacuum on the planet zzzxpter 5 in the constillation of Dusittmatre.

 

[gadgetmind]

Of course, because of color confinement, you can't get isolated quarks; they either form into pairs, called mesons, or groups of three, called baryons. There have been claims of tetraquarks and pentaquarks, but I regard this as science fiction.
Ian (who likes his scifi hard with a capital Hadron)