Talk:Metrication opposition

Why does there have to be a prison sentence

If the government is so sure that metric will work why does there have to be a prison sentence and fine attached to the law. It is like a police state being dictated to. Why were we not asked our oppinion on whether we would like to go metric or have metric? Because it is another one of those dictats from Brussels that we have to adopt and the sooner we are out of Europe the better! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.9.69.55 (talk) 10:26, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Companies get fined for use on non-SI units in trade and advertising. The idea is that customer should be able to compare the price of products. It's getting very inconvinient if one store sells one brand of milk at 0,45EUR per liter and another one at 0,45EUR for a pint. Which one is cheaper?

The first brand it it's a UK pint. The second brand if it's a US pint.

And we haven't started with some obscure chinese units. Good luck shopping! --217.91.139.106 (talk) 11:13, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Just for the record, Weights and Measures Acts have had criminal penalties attached since at least the 12th century. At least you don't get hanged any more. --Red King (talk) 08:22, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Volume measures are the one area where the British somewhat blew it, IMO..and it was largely as a result of trying to make it more decimalised, because metrication was all the rage at the time. They made it so that 10 pounds of water would be one gallon, and one ounce of water would weigh one ounce. That meant 20 ounces for a pint, instead of the old 16 (a pint thus became a pound about a pound and a quarter instead of an even pound as it was and still is in America). Also, the litre/pint or litre/quart (in your example you said pint but quarts were what you were referring to), a US quart and a litre are close enough to each other in volume that for most practical purposes they can easily be substituted one for the other (keeping in mind a litre is just slightly more than a US quart). But an imperial quart is a good deal larger, I think. Firejuggler86 (talk) 11:22, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Hmmm...

Apart the whole non-sense of this article, should I conclude that the main flaw of the International System (aka metric) is that it's too simple to use and learn because it requires only to move the decimal separator towards left when you switch to a bigger unit or adding zeroes when switching to a smaller one? But wouldn't learning maths be a better way to address the change of measurement systems? -- SERGIO aka the Black Cat 18:40, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

Straying into wp:NOTFORUM here but the real reason is that it is FOREIGN, what better reason could you want All the rest is make-weight, this is the answer now find some questions that suit. --Red King (talk) 20:06, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

1. too many syllables: inch, foot, pound, and quart each has one syllable; mile, acre, and gallon each has two. Kilogram has 4.

2. tonne is less phonetic than ton. Other French spellings are also unphonetic—which is saying something give that (if I understand correctly) English is generally less phonetic than French.

3. The masses of some products don't make sense in either system. 300 or 400 mL makes sense, 12 oz makes sense, 355 mL (12.5 oz) doesn't make sense in either.

4. Hectare#Decare: the forms of measurement can be stupid. A sq m is apparently a centiare while an are, abbreviated as a, is 100 sq meters. Hectare makes very good sense—probably the best, but decare, abbreviated as daa, is stupid. Again "square mile" is three syllables, "square kilometer" is five.

This is a pet peeve of mine because because if decare—and perhaps if abbreviated as da—was 10 m x 10 m, it'd be a great way of measuring and calculating things like floor space, but instead they gave us something that can't be square-rooted cleanly, just like acre.

DMBFFF (talk) 01:01, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

But an are is 10m X 10m. Not that anybody uses it for real estate because n m² is more convenient and sound bigger bang/buck (but not as big as square feet). Of course if you are measuring a farm, big units like Ha are more useful though again of course you get a 'lot' more of it if you count it in acres. --Red King (talk) 08:16, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

and words like "are" are somewhat unwieldly in the US. I think I read it's related to acre. If so, that's stupid too as it's nowhere near an acre. Seems these 18th/19th Century French elites didn't totally have their act together.

As for expressions, I'm not sure. Eg:

"He drank eight thousand milliliters of beer that hour."
"He drank eight liters of beer that hour."
"He drank zero point zero zero eight kiloliters of beer that hour."
"He drank zero point zero zero metric tons of beer that hour."
"He drank about a twentieth of a barrel of beer that hour."

also

"Big Jake stood at two thousand millimeters."
"Big Jake stood at two hundred centimeters."
"Big Jake stood at twenty decimeters."
"Big Jake stood at two meters."
"Big Jake stood at zero point two dekameters."

Again, I'd like a unit for 10 m x 10 m.
Hectare is great as it's a square hectometer.
So what is a square dekameter?
A decare? No an are.
A decare is ≈ 3.162277660168 meters squared.

Stupid.

DMBFFF (talk) 12:59, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Ah you missed the important question: how far can a pair of oxen plough a stony field in a day? And if the new king has two left feet, one longer than the other, do all the old school rulers to be replaced? --Red King (talk) 23:47, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

That story about changing the length of the foot every time there was a new king is a load of BS - a unit was established, and it remained fixed for centuries, for the most part.

Really, though, a meter is a terrible unit to measure a person's height. It's even less useful than a yard would be, and even the yard is not suitable for that purpose. But at least a height of two yards is very close to the average height of an adult man. Two meters, though, is approaching giant status, while one meter is about the height of a 5 year old. Also, I ask - how often does the situation arise when you need to convert between centimeters and meters? Or meters and kilometers? That is to say, if it's 50 kilometers to the nearest station, of what practical value is it to be able to easily determine how many centimeters that is? Firejuggler86 (talk) 10:54, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Merge from British Weights and Measures Association

British Weights and Measures Association does not seem notable enough for its own article, but it might be worth a mention in this article. -- Beland (talk) 02:58, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

This seems sensible to me, as to my mind it's not obvious that such a nonentity of an advocacy organization (which has "campaigned" unsuccessfully for some two decades to return the UK to the 19th century) is notable enough to merit having its own article. I can find barely any mentions of them outside their cringe-riddled, conspiracy-theory-peddling website. And this seems to be the only other page that would have any reason to mention a group with such low notability. Archon 2488 (talk) 14:17, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

  Y Merger complete. Klbrain (talk) 07:57, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Is the ISO paper A series relevant here?

The section "Industry-specific product sizing" gives the irrationality of the A paper sizes as an example of an industry where metric units are awkward to use (the size of paper is not a round number). This is completely irrelevant, as measuring A-paper in inches would be worse, A4 is 210mm × 297mm which is 8.26772... × 11.6929.... The imperial system is not a benefit here. In fact, the ISO A paper is *defined* in mm: A paper has whole integer mm measure. The metric system is not to blame here, the reason behind this has to do with the irrationality of the golden ratio, and I've never seen this idea as an argument against metrication anywhere. It is irrelevant and should be removed. Saulpila (talk) 14:58, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

More coverage of the opposition to the 1970s-1980s US metrication attempt?

There's quite a lot of coverage at the Metrication in the United States#20th century how the 1970-s and early 1980s metrication attempt was stalled, and this video even quotes a NYT article from the time that mentions a "gala against metrics" conducted by an "anti-metric group" that featured literally "the Most Beautiful Foot contest". You can't make this stuff up, and I hope it could be added to the article somehow, even though I don't know how right now! Ain92 (talk) 14:53, 27 October 2022 (UTC)