I found myself explaining the UK’s adoption of the Metric system to an American and an Australian.
The US has of course remained uniquely wedded to the Imperial system while Australia has fully adopted the Metric system. The UK, I explained, is a bit of a virgin – not defiled by metrification but not pure to the Imperial system. We appear to be metric but we are not really sure about it. So for example, in company with the US, we are the last two countries to measure long distances in miles but in common with most of humanity we measure short distances in centimetres. Fluids are measured in litres but there are exceptions. Beer in a pub is bought in pints, but UK pints are not the same as US pints – a UK pint is 20 fluid ounces (there’s those pesky imperial measures again) whereas a US pint is 16 fluid ounces. Of course a gallon is eight pints but we don’t use gallons any more except we still measure vehicle fuel consumption in 'miles per gallon' even though this creates the greatest difficulty calculating fuel consumption (thank goodness for car computers). But when I say we buy beer in pints this does not apply to beer in bottles which are typically 500 millilitres. There are some pint bottles of course, milk is in pints when delivered to your door but is sold in metric bottles when bought from a supermarket. Uniquely we measure body weight in Stones (although these are being replaced by Kilos) but there are no signs that infant body weight will ever be measured in anything other than Pounds.
So far so good; my companions were looking somewhat quizzical and wondered why we made life so complicated - but I was saving the best ‘til last. Weather temperature I explained is measured in both Celsius and Fahrenheit so that the British can choose to use Celsius for low temperatures and Fahrenheit for high. So we’ll say it’s “minus 10°” if it’s chilly outside but “its 86°” if it’s a scorcher! The only logic for this is that minus 10° (the Celsius measure) sounds a lot colder that plus 14° (the Fahrenheit equivalent) but 86° sounds a lot hotter than 30° (the Celsius measure).
They concurred and suggested the British were all quite mad (and of course, they are absolutely right)!
