Re: [GZG] Slightly OT - Hypothetical weapon question

On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 12:29 PM, McCarthy, Tom (xwave)
<Tom.McCarthy@xwave.com> wrote:
> If memory serves, Canada went metric around 1976 (silver jubilee?),
and that would put
> TomB in about grade 2 at that time.

That would be right. I started high school that year. In Geography,
each day we started the class by taking a ruler and neatly crossing
out imperial measurements and changing it to metric. This was to bring
the older text books "up to date".

My dad was a carpenter and joiner. He always did everything in
imperial, even after the change. I don't know about now, but up until
10 years ago I know that wood, etc. was still sold in imperial units:
2 x 4s in 10 and 12 foot lengths, etc. He grew up with Imperial, of
course, but he preferred imperial measurements. He couldn't find a
tape measure in metric to the 10ths of a millimetre at the time, or
even to half a millimetre. Maybe you can now. He could find tape
measures out to 1/64th of an inch (roughly 0.4 of a millimetre) and
tape measures to the 1/32 of an inch (0.8 of a millimetre) were
common. For him to switch to metric would have meant working in
unacceptably large tolerances.

> Most Canadians my age / TomB's age can easily convert common linear
measures,
> volumes, temperatures and weights on the fly (3m = 10', 4 L ~ 1 US
gallon, 331 ml beer is
> called a pint, *9/5+32, 0.9 kg ~ 2 lbs).

This ability fascinates my American wife. :-)

-- 
Allan Goodall		 http://www.hyperbear.com
agoodall@hyperbear.com
awgoodall@gmail.com

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