Long Live Imperial System
By Prabhat Mukherjee
Recently I heard a news item on TV that the European Union has agreed to allow the United Kingdom to keep the imperial system of measurement (foot, pound) in parallel with the metric system (meter, kilogram).
This was perhaps done to satisfy Britain's passion to retain a part of its Victorian heritage. (In fact, although the system is generally connected with the British, it is derived from one that actually originated with the Roman Empire.)
While only the British now follow a dual system, all other nations in the EU follow the metric system. The British perhaps feel that using only the metric system would rob them of their cultural identity.
The EU's consent to allow use of the imperial system in Britain appeared to me a bit strange in that while the EU was trying to harmonize the whole trading system within Europe, the imperial system of measurement would be an anti-thesis to this standardization.
On a global scale, other than the United States, the nations that follow the imperial system are Myanmar and Liberia. I am not sure about Australia and New Zealand.
As well as the U.K., Canada also follows measurements in a mixed way. While they follow the metric system in engineering and scientific work, they still allow the use of the imperial system of measurement in consumer goods trade, for example grocery items.
Sometimes in the late 1950s, all countries were supposed to convert to the metric system from the imperial system following the efforts made by the International Standards Organization based in Paris.
Actually the effort started in France just after the French Revolution, but failed to materialize until 100 years later, in the 19th century. I remember in 1957 when we were in school, the Indian government chose to adopt the metric system. The metric conversion was supposed to result in major economic benefits.
Initially it resulted in some confusion as the consumer, would suddenly have no idea what groceries and vegetables would cost. In the existing system, these were sold in easily understood units of measurement called a ``container,'' or say with fruit in ``dozens'' or ``scores.''
In a metric supermarket, however, the deli person would say, ``How much do you want? A kilogram or 454 grams or 227 grams? You would get confused and you would wind up buying enough vegetables and fruit to fill your drawing room with.
And the coins? The less said the better. Suddenly cash transaction swelled because of lower denomination coins appearing in the metric system. Earlier there were 16 annas to a rupee, but now one rupee was 100 paisa.
You could not properly convert the old currency to a new one because the seller was in a hurry and you were weak at math. You got frustrated with calculations and the customer behind you was recommending you to take to math studies more diligently. You handed over more coins to the seller in the process than what you were supposed to pay.
There was a joke about the U.S. In the U.S., when the government started putting up metric highway signs, Americans responded by shooting them down in anger with nine-millimeter bullets. They erroneously thought that a speed limit of 70 miles per hour was increased to 110 miles per hour whereas it was actually 110 km per hour.
Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the U.S. except in the gun industry.
Recent TV news also had a story that filled the hearts of the Americans. Americans hate kilograms and it was reported in the TV news that in Paris the standard weight of a `kilogram' metallic cylinder made of platinum and Iridium alloy, which was kept in a vault of the International Standards Organization, is loosing its weight with time when compared with other standard kilogram weights of various other nations.
So Americans would say that they were justified in avoiding a mass that reduced day by day like the waning moon. They would rather follow a system that relied on body parts (length measurements in inch, feet and yards) and old fashioned carrying devices (peck, quart, pint).
When they go to a store to buy fries, they would hate to see those ugly long digits like 454 grams on the packet instead of a nice one-pound label. An American knew that one pound of fries would last the breakfast session but he was not sure if that 454 grams of stuff would last that long.
Remember the 1999 incident in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) when 125 million dollars worth of a rocket took a nosedive into the ocean below, because a sub-contractor used the wrong conversion to U.S. customary measurement units, from the metric system.
Present statistics show that 95 percent of the planet uses the metric system and it is for those 5 percent that the EU has thought of retaining the old imperial system of measurement. The British would hate to eliminate the phrase 'pound of flesh' from their language. They would not budge an `inch' on this, Bill Gates eliminating 3 and 1/2 inch floppies from his computer system notwithstanding.
Long live the imperial system.
Prabhat Mukherjee resides in Calgary, Canada, working for an oil and gas company.