General > General Technical Chat

UK back to "imperial" measurements ?

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Terry Bites:
I have seen this discussion in What Bollocks magazine.

I'm sure us Brits would love to use cubits per salck cullishigay . Lots of old codgers (not me, obviously) and our legion morons would like to go back to the sixties when LSD (£sd) was real money.
We'd need to get off those milligrams while we're at it. I'm going make my apothecary weigh it out in grains while I watch. He said "Would you prefer the liquid formulation, 6 carats per drachm? "
I struck him for his insolence of course!

Soon I expect the tori grandees to consider adopting the gold standard and making rickets compulsory.

Terry Bites:
Skeggy OMG. Too many wasted childhood hours. I know a bloke who lives in the middle another town of Lincoln county - Scunthorpe.

TimFox:
I remember (late '60s) ordering from an ad in Wireless World to a UK firm for delivery to the US, when the Carolingian currency denominations were still in use.
At that time, the exchange rate was 1 GBP = 2.40 USD, which made the conversion very easy if I just converted the UK price to pence.
Long before credit cards, I went to my local small-town bank for a bank draft, payable in sterling.
At that time, banks were still independent, but small banks used a "correspondent bank", in this case Chemical Bank of New York.
(Later, during the merger frenzy, Chemical Bank acquired several other large banks, but the successor used the most famous name of the group, Chase.)
The teller at the small-town (Iowa) bank referred me to a vice president, who filled out the draft by hand.
He mis-spelled shilling, confusing it with the Austrian schilling.
I was so embarrassed.

tggzzz:

--- Quote from: TimFox on June 05, 2022, 03:58:23 pm ---I remember (late '60s) ordering from an ad in Wireless World to a UK firm for delivery to the US, when the Carolingian currency denominations were still in use.
At that time, the exchange rate was 1 GBP = 2.40 USD, which made the conversion very easy if I just converted the UK price to pence.
Long before credit cards, I went to my local small-town bank for a bank draft, payable in sterling.
At that time, banks were still independent, but small banks used a "correspondent bank", in this case Chemical Bank of New York.
(Later, during the merger frenzy, Chemical Bank acquired several other large banks, but the successor used the most famous name of the group, Chase.)
The teller at the small-town (Iowa) bank referred me to a vice president, who filled out the draft by hand.
He mis-spelled shilling, confusing it with the Austrian schilling.
I was so embarrassed.

--- End quote ---

I did almost the same, but in reverse. I orderer new-fangled 0.5" LEDs from California, and had to get a special international money order.

rfclown:
I grew up in the US with our goofy units. I was told as a child that we were going to convert to the better way... but it never happened. With our tools (nuts and bolts) we have a mix, so I have to have both English and metric wrenches and socket sets, which is a pain. I prefer when the socket is metric and I don't have to figure out if 9/32" is bigger than 16/64" (as opposed to 7mm vs 6mm) when I rummaging for the next bigger or smaller socket. For nuts/bolts, it would be nice if things were all metric... except that I'm an RF guy and I use mostly 3.5mm (SMA) connectors which have 5/16" nuts. Aaagggghhhh!

What I never understood was kg, which is mass, but used as force (weight). Why was that done wrong? If you're going to make us switch to different units, don't make it wrong units. At least in our goofy units we didn't weigh is slugs. When I see pressure gauges with kg/cm2 scales I want to throw them across the room. I guess we can't expect to make people to change when they've done the wrong thing too long. And then those same people throw stones at those who are using old goofy units.

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