Posts Tagged ‘imperial measures’
“The metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet”*…
Nearly everywhere in the world, folks use the metric system to measure things; here in the U.S. we use the Imperial system. (Note that Britain should really be a dark shade of green– i.e. a little yellow, mixed with a lot of blue. Brits may regularly use inches, ounces, miles, and pounds in everyday life, but have officially been Metric since 1965.)
Mike Sowden (amusingly and informatively) recounts the history of the metric system, then muses on why Imperial measures– the mile, the inch, the cubit, the ell– have staying power…
… Yes, all of these lack precision, so they’re useless for modern science, and would be incredibly dangerous if used for engineering purposes. But they also tell a story of people’s relationship with the space they moved through.
A lexis of movement – perhaps in a similar fashion to the language of landscape that writer Robert MacFarlane has done so much to retrieve.
This is why I’m on the fence about Imperial now. There’s no question that Metric is necessary as a standardised, exact form used to make cars that don’t shake themselves to bits, planes that don’t fall out the sky and spacecraft that can launch themselves to interplanetary targets with mind-blowing accuracy.
But the versions of Imperial still being used by people in everyday life deserve their place in the world too.
Anyone brought up thinking and feeling temperature in Fahrenheit can tell us Celsius-reared folk something different about how we can experience the world. Anyone cooking in pounds will be thinking about food a little differently (“well, it’s just 2 cups, isn’t it?”). All these things are tiny windows into new ways of seeing what we think we already know…
In defense of an old way of measuring: “Why Go Imperial in a World Gone Metric?” from @Mikeachim.
See also: “The real reasons the US refuses to go metric,” and explainer from Verge Science on the last big attempt to turn the US towards Metric, why it failed, and the ways scientists and manufacturers have snuck it in anyway.
* Dave Barry
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As we muse on measurement, we might pause, on Pi Day, for a piece of pi(e)…
… in celebration of Albert Einstein’s birthday; he was born on this date in 1879.
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
“Imperial is lit, but Metric is liter”…*
The English-speaking world has been famously (and, many argue, problematically) slow to switch to the metric system of measurement. One of the reasons is the way in which traditional “imperial” measures are baked into our understanding of products and services we use every day.
Consider the barleycorn, which is still used as the basis of shoe sizes in English-speaking countries.
In ancient Rome, the inch (which was one twelfth of a foot) measured the width across the (interphalangeal) joint of the thumb. By the 7th century in England, the barleycorn became a standard measurement with three ears of corn, laid end to end, equalling one inch. It took until the thirteenth century before the inch was officially sanctioned. Under pressure, Edward II (r. 1307-27) eventually succumbed to appeals from scholars and tradesmen to issue a decree to standardise measurement (Ledger, 1985).
Henceforth an English inch was the distance measured across three barleycorns. Thirty nine (39) barleycorns laid end to end became a foot, and 117 laid end to end became a yard. Whilst the barleycorn decree of Edward II had nothing to do with shoe sizes per se, many shoemakers began to use shoe sticks. Tradesmen had traditionally used the hand span method of measurement, which preferred the quarter of an inch unit, but after the introduction of the barleycorn measure, many began to adopt the third of an inch unit. With 39 barley corns approximating the length of a normal foot this was graded Size 13 and became the largest shoe size. Other sizes were graded down by 1/3 rd of an inch or one barleycorn… [source]
The barleycorn is but one of the old English measures that. more or less obviously, still shape our encounters with and experience of the world:
Forgotten, but not gone: the barleycorn.
* bad joke
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As we muse on measurement, we might send inventive birthday greetings to Charles Franklin Kettering; he was born on this date in 1876. An engineer, businessman, and inventor (the holder of 186 patents), he worked at National Cash Register (where he created the first electric cash register with an electric motor that opened the drawer), co-founded DELCO, and was head of research at General Motors from 1920 to 1947. He invented the key-operated self-starting motor and developed several new engine types, quick-drying lacquer finishes, anti-knock fuels, and variable-speed transmissions. In association with the DuPont Chemical Company, he was also responsible for the invention of Freon refrigerant for refrigeration and air conditioning systems. While working with the Dayton-Wright Company he developed the “Bug” aerial torpedo, considered the world’s first aerial missile. In 1927, he founded the Kettering Foundation, a non-partisan research foundation devoted to answering the question: “what does it take for democracy to work as it should?”
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