Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 3rd Mar 2013 13:48 UTC
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Member since:
2011-05-12
Apparently the metric system was allowed to be used since 1864 in the UK, but the empirical system is still used a lot. I suspect the common citizen will use feet and inches before meters, primarily because they know by feeling how long these are.
In The Netherlands people still use the "pond" (pound), which is 500 grams, while it was dropped in 1869 and again officially canned in 1937.
(I'm cheating with Wikipedia)
It's one thing to switch systems, but it's another to get the population to accept it and use it.
We switched from guilders to euro's in 2002, but I'm still doing the mental calculation to convert back to guilders. I don't really have to, but if we were to switch from meters to yards I MUST convert them back to meters, because I would have no idea mentally how much x yards is. If my GPS unit says to take a turn in 300 meters I can instantly judge it. I don't think I would ever be able to do so with yards or feet.