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Actually, Richard, it is we in the US who preserve the traditional measures

You will note that I said nothing about tradition, only size. Having said which I suspect that the US pint will outlast the Imperial pint for one simple reason - it is very nearly the same measure as half a litre (actually 1.057 US pints). That same metric measure is, though only 0.8799 of a mighty Imperial pint.

Metrication is proceeding apace, even in conservative America and Britain, and soon our old measures will disappear and we'll all have to get used to metric.

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Metrication is proceeding apace, even in conservative America and Britain, and soon our old measures will disappear and we'll all have to get used to metric.

I wish the USA had gone metric back when Ben Franklin came back from France and suggested it! A few years ago NASA lost a billion dollars on a splace exploration launch because the manufacturer supplied calibration numbers in feet per second, whereas NASA assumed metres per second. And, since the metric measurement system is base ten, and I have ten fingers and ten toes, it's much easier for me to take off my shoes and count to twenty in metrics! Therefore, I consider feet, inches, pints, gallons, etc. all to be useless words. (Whew! It took a while to tie all this back into the thread subject!)

So a 'gallon of gasoline' means a greater quantity in the UK than in the US?

Wonder why the Brits chose to change the definition. Could it perhaps have been a way for their ships to get more miles per galleon?

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Could it perhaps have been a way for their ships to get more miles per galleon?

More miles THAN the galleon, if you remember the defeat of the Spanish Armada. The Brits had lighter ships.

Things are indeed moving towards the metric system here at a steady pace and for poor old souls like me it can be very confusing. When I went to school we were being taught metric while everything in the real world was imperial. As a result I have grown up thinking of distance and speed as miles but much smaller distances in metric. I can weigh ingredients for cooking in metric but if I think of my own weight it has to be imperial.

It also occurs to me that there will me a possible gender split on this issue. Many men may feel quite flattered by the switch to metric measurement but I doubt if many women will want to provide measurements that way!

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It also occurs to me that there will me a possible gender split on this issue. Many men may feel quite flattered by the switch to metric measurement but I doubt if many women will want to provide measurements that way!

I don't understand, Doad. I can see why a woman wouldn't want to buy a .9 meter bra, but .15 meters for men? Ewwwwww!

Think in terms of centimeters instead of inches. A woman's 34 inch hips sound rather bigger as 86.36 centimeters but for some men the conversion of inches to centimeters may seem quite flattering.

Ahem! Another conversation about size? How you men do go on . . .

I think many men as well as women would like to have their weights listed in kilograms, since a kilogram equals 2.2 pounds. Then the 220-pound heavyweight can claim he or she only weighs 100!

Tinman

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since a kilogram equals 2.2 pounds. Then the 220-pound heavyweight can claim he or she only weighs 100!

Tinman

Sounds even better when you say you weigh fourteen stone.