I was working and handling cash when we changed to Decimal currency in 1966 and it was so much easier.
For metrics I can still see what an inch and a foot and a yard are in my mind but I have to ,still, really think about a Centimetre and I am not sure whether a Ml is to drink or measure.
Just plain lazy I guess.
I tend to gravitate to the older person serving in the hardware or material shop as they still remember the old measurements and can help.
I taught my Grandies how to sing the little song,
" I have sixpence, jolly jolly sixpence,
sixpence to last me all my life,
With tuppence to spend, and tuppence to lend and tuppence to take home to my wife."
Had fun explaining the amounts to them.
Marion

Maybe we are all in the older generation who learned the Imperial system first.

Marion I too can see feet, inches and yards and also centimetres and even metres when its on the flat - as in measuring materials and land but wouldn't know where to start to visualise height in metric.

I know I am only 5'2" but cannot for the life of me remember what that is in metric. I certainly couldn't look at someone and say they were .........centimtres tall.

Anyone have the answer to that.

Cathy

yes wattleblossom,

reckon we are of the older set when i look at my hand span i know it is around 10 or 11 inches. also we have some yankee gardeners lurking and they have progressed (if that is the term) to metric measure lineal or liquid (they have their own measure there). also when they bought metric measure in life got real expensive all of a sudden.

meat went to 1 pound sterling for 1 pound weight of meat, and fuel went from 40 cents a gallon to 40 cents a litre real quick, good inflationary trend that conversion. not to forget in the round off we lost 4 shillings out of our spending unit, the price you pay to have 100 cents in 1 dollar hey easier maths for all but much harder on the hip pocket.

can still remember the racq up here saying before decimal measure came in that motorisits would be paying equivalent to 1 dollar a gallon for fuel there was a hue and cry everyone was going to leave their cars at home, but yup within 12 months and with the introduction of the short change metric system we where paying equivalent to $1 per gallon. slight of hand magic more taxes for government and heaps more free profit for oil companies.

len

Len, let me get this straight. Are you saying you still use imperial measurements because everything became more expensive 40 years ago when decimal currency was introduced? I remember being a bit miffed back in '66 when one day I could buy 6 'freckles' (lollies) for sixpence, and then the next day it changed to 5 for 5 cents. But all that was a long time ago and I can honestly say I've never let it stop me eating chocolate!

"WAY BACK" as you put it, in the 70's I was in my 20's. I had excelled at mathematics as a teenager, and had spent more time that I like now to even think about, working out areas, volumes, densities, speeds, accelerations, forces, in imperial. Metric would lave been way easier of course. Even using a calculator would have been easier, but we had logarithm tables and the newly invented slide rule.
SO ....it is pretty much ingrained in my brain that imperial is how stuff works.
I never had the same problem with Gallons, Pounds, ounces, etc. Litres, Kg, etc are easy to use, and much of our chemistry experiments dealt in mg and micrograms anyway.
The imperial system which used things like inches and feet and yards was always easy to use "farmer's style". When knitting I measured things with my thumb (an inch long). Most men have feet around 1 ft long. A yard is an wide step for me and an easy step for a man. I guess that's where they came from in the first place. I just can't pace things out in metres. My legs aren't long enough.
Dismal currency ("On the 14th of February nineteen sixty six......") was of course, a great relief to anyone who spent much time as a child, trying to calculate things in sterling.
A km is much less distance to travel, and if you have a 1 hectare garden it is so much bigger than 1 acres, so there are definite advantages :-) Funny that the real estate agents still talk in acres. Perhaps because it makes it sound like there's more?
On a humorous note, I once went to a hardware for some timber for an arbour. I asked for timber 10cm X 10cm about 9ft long. The older guy there said to me "Oh - do you mean a piece of 4 by 4 about 2 and a 1/2 metres?"
Wattle blossom, if you were only spending 5c on chocolate in 66 then you were only a very young chocoholic, barely fully addicted. I'd say around 8 years old? I was a fully fledged 20c caramello block by then. So I would guess that most of your high school maths was in metric.

Here is a link that might be useful: Now it all makes sense

Good reading in some of the other things on the list.Where do you find writings like this, I guess I am still a bit scared of hitting too many buttons on the computer in case I get a virus.

Greyish haired , Marion

I was only just started learning imperial measurements at school when metric came in though we hadn't really learnt imperial liquid measures yet so I'm inclined to use both measures except for liquids for which I use metric. My parents had a hard time changing over and used to use imperial much more so I used to use it at home and metric at school. I'm inclined to switch between the two depending on who I'm talking to, if it is an older person I'll use imperial but with a younger person I'll use metric.

My husband who is 10 yrs younger than me and is a welder has to work with exact sizes and uses metric but has to know imperial as many of the older customers use it, which he had to learn as well.

I'm like you, Sparaxis, say things like a couple of mls more than an 1" and have done the same at a hardware store and even been known to say something is 3'and 7cms long.

Trailers are another thing that is still sold in imperial - 6x4 or 7x5, you rarely hear it said 1.8x1.2 or 2.3x1.5 except in larger trailers over 3m or so.

Talking about this is a good way to try and guess everyone's age :-)

consider that in the united states they not only drive on the wrorng side fo the road they still talk imperial.
I laughed at the 4x4 by 2 and a half metres.I still use body measurements for roughing out distances like you sparaxis.My work boots are ten inches long and I sometimes measure stuf in hand lengths.The heel of my palm to my middle finger tip is about six inches.I convert my fuel usage from metric to good old miles per gallon.
I measure all my chemicals in metric but quite often refer to a 225 litre drum as a 44(gallon) the people I deal with seem to understand me!I buy my baling twine in kilometre rolls but will measure off a length by spreading both arms right out and referring to it as a yard of twine.
I guess I am just a crazy mixed up farmer.I can tell you my weight in kilos(but I won't).

Favourite old recipe books are a mine field when you try to convert a recipe for someone younger.

What I find to be quite amazing is the strange phenomenon of "baby weights" Have you ever noticed that even really young women will describe their newborn child as being 8 lb 4 oz and Im talking peopli in their early twenties. Strange isnt it.

no wattleblossom, i didn't quiet say that, but what we used to get for 10 a penny now cost 10 cents for 1. also with real estate even though metric has been in all this time young and old alike understand acreage more than they are ever likely to equate what size 1 hectare is (it's around 2. something acres isn't it scratching head) asked a younger generation bloke not long ago how much grass he could slash in 1 hour he said oh about 3 acres.

all i say is since all this so called easier monetory stuff came in it has escalated our cost of living.

len

I got a few giggles out of the above. As a child of the 50's, everything learned then was Imperial. I'm sure Metric is much easier, but it is still like a foreign language. YQ I have no doubt about babies being given weights in "old time language" it's for the benefit of grandparents or great-grandparents, so they can actually visualise the size.
Imperial measures seem to be out-lawed . But given our population diversity in age and nationality, when really crucial stuff comes on TV or radio like police looking for a suspect of such and such centimetres I don't think it would take much effort to add a subtitle ("that's 6 foot one") otherwise I would not have a clue.
And I have read some stories like Jan's - someone ordering material in Imperial and being bluntly told "We sell material by the metre, Madam" OK, I'll have 2 & 1/2 metres. "Will that be 36 or 45 inch width"?
Old habits.

and not to forget in the air and on the oceans it is still 'knots' &/or 'nautical miles' and a ships displacement as far as i know is still in 'tons' not the what the heck 'tonnes' see they couldn't even devise a metric word for 1,000 kilograms without munging the old imperial measure to get the name.

len

I too went to school in the 50's and 60's and didn't come across metric measurements until university.
I guess my reason for reminding everyone that metric measurements where phased in back in the 70's, was because if you are in your 50's or 60's now, then you were quite young when metric measurements where introduced.
I too have noticed baby weights in lbs and ozs, (I had to check with an above post to see how to wright lbs and ozs), but funnily enough, when my children were born some 20 odd years ago, their weights were given in metric, with the imperial in brackets. It appears we were more ready to embrace the new then, than we are now.

I think old habits die hard and everyone has given up trying to change. Though the next generation should be mainly metric. My kids don't really know imperial and I have to translate (gets those old brain cells working)

I suppose while there are still countries who use imperial measurements it's not a bad idea to keep in touch with it. Other than that I just think metric is a million times easier to deal with (and yes, I WAS brought up with imperial measurements). I have the problem with my husband still talking in feet and inches which drives me crazy, but I am a metric girl (sorry middle-aged woman) now and proud of it! Lol.
Cheers,
Dee.

Dee, glad to know there is at least one other 'metric girl' here.
Marion, you don't need to worry about knowing the difference between liquid and linear measurements, i.e. millilitres and millimetres, just do what everyone else does and call them both mls, pronounced mills. Do this, and the next tradesman you call to your house will be most impressed.

I grew up with metric but I when it comes to people's height cms mean nothing to me, If someone is 5 ft 7, or 6 foot, I know what it means but if you gave me someone's height in cms, it means absolutely nothing to me, i usually say "what's that in feet? lol. the same with calories and kilojoules, I know a kilojoule is roughly 4.2 x a calorie but I always have to convert to calories before it means anything apart from just being a number.

when it comes to the hardware, I recently found out that a lot of stuff is actually still in imperial sizes which have just been converted to metric, for example lengths of timber, steel and even shadecloth all come in strange lengths which equate to the old imperial sizes (at least thats what I was told by a tradesman). I was asking about it because I could never figure out why these things seem to come in such odd sizes, but it makes sense. maybe they didnt want to confuse all the tradesmen who learnt things in imperial.

I grew up with metric (was born 2 years to the day from dollars and cents day). But like trancegemini, for me height is in feet and inches. Also length is a crazy blend of feet inches, metres and centimetres. Why I can only guess. Maybe it is just that, a blend of what you learn in school and what you learn at home - (in my case my parents were not going to adapt overnight).
Sorry no answers... what about teenagers today? What shall I teach my son (3 years old)... who knows.

I also grew up with metric but my parents used both imperial and metric. Therefore I think of a long distance (eg. between towns) in terms of kilometres but a short length (eg. across the room) is typically in feet. I think of land in acres even though my work colleagues exclusively use hectares.

Weight uses a metric scale except when I need 4oz of sugar for a recipe. I find it easier to think in ounces because of the cookbooks when I was learning to cook - none were in metric. Other than that, kilograms is my primary method. Oh, and when babies are born - even though I can visualise 3.5kg easily enough, I prefer to hear the weight in pounds. And then I lose interest because they're noisy and look like peeled rabbits...*grin*

Liquid is measured in litres though I still pepper my speech with "I could drink about a gallon of ..." when my brain has trouble visualising a gallon. Not sure why that happens. I've never said I could drink a quart of something though...

When my daughter was born I could cope quite easily when they told me 53cms but her weight did not have any meaning for me until I converted it to 8lb 14oz (still could not tell you what she was is kilos!)
When we changed to metric money I can still remember my Granny saying " why couldnt they wait until all the old people had died"

Our 19 year old son has just returned from working for a year as a jackaroo on cattle stations in the NT and Qld. He tells me that "up there", metric measurements are a bit like hair gel - use either and you'll be called a p**fter, use both and you'll be called a p**fter from the city.

I grew up with the imperial system and when it changed to metric it was the best thing that happened. The only downside is people still tend to talk in millimetres for large dimensions ie. 2500mm for 2.5 metres. Back to imperial one didn't talk in sixteenths when they could express it in yards so why use millimetres for large dimensions.
For us older generations metric is easy if you will only let go the old antiquated system. It was complex and not user friendly. Most metric measurement s today are usually expressed in easy multiples of 5, ten, hundred etc. This has to be much easier to remember than a mixture of fractions and decimal.

Hooray for METRIC,

Doug.

I don't think there is any need for letting go of anything. If you learn a new language you don't forget the old one. It is good for the brain to be able to understand more than one spoken language. Why should it be any less beneficial to be able to work in more than one mathematical language?
We are daily given on the radio, the conversion rates from one currency to another, and there must be thousands of people out there each day who have the need to make this conversion. If you buy or sell from/to the US, you may well need to regularly convert from imperial to metric.
Use of the brain for complicated functions is what saves people from degenerating into senility.

To think for nearly 30 years I designed houses in metric when I could have been exercising my brain by using imperial measurements. If I'd known, I might have also slowed down the brain degeneration of numerous draftsmen, engineers, town planners, builders and timber merchants along the way.

Doug, maybe we could start a club for Senile Metric Using Baby Boomers. We could call it SMUBB.

First sign of dementia is misinterpretting the previous persons's comments :-)

So anyway whats wrong with dementia you can hide your own easter eggs!

Doug, I'm with you when it comes to saying 2.5m instead of 2500mm but my husband is a welder and works in mm as measurements are often a few mms bigger or shorter than the metre eg 2497mm, and usually have to be exact - if you're making a gate to fit a 3m opening you don't make the gate 3m or it won't fit.

And if you are taking a trip and the distance is 3 days ride? (that was on horseback and the horse might be 15 hands high)
In home construction in the US, A 1 meter wide X 2 m long sheet of paneling would be easy to handle BUT the old construction has 2x4 studs on 16" centers and 8' ceilings. SOOO... we need 4'x8' paneling for remodeling. And building codes are all based on old standards.
As far as recipes, how much is a pinch of salt in metrics(or ounces) or a dash of pepper?
We still buy gallons of gas but the price went from $0.21/gal to $2.92/gal.
Profits are metric!

Spanners and tools.
My DH is always grumbling about having to have 2 sets for the old and new nuts and bolt sizes.

Joiners on hoses and poly pipe fittings

I listen to the grumbles coming even after all this time on metric, I guess by the time our Grandies get the old tools they will be put in a little unused collection of Grandad's tools and stuff.
Marion

Goldhills, millimetres is for small measurements amd metres is for large sizes. I often go down to less than 0.025mm or one thousandth of an inch (Ughh) when machining on a lathe. What the real problem is with allthose other imperial diehards is they won't let go or in some cases even try. I grew up with imperial and often still have to use it because some fool designed the original in imperial instead of metric. Happily I can switch between both systems BUT as I said before my opinion is metric is the way to go. Sorry fellow old fogies out there but it is time to change or get left behind. (LOL) Doug.

Not an old fogie here. America still uses imperial. If you buy needlework or knitting magazines that originate in the US you have to understand imperial. I do cross stitch. The measurements are nearly always given as stitches to the inch. The reason is that much of the stuff originates from countries that use imperial. There is nothing stupid about people understanding both systems. I agree that people should use metric where it applies, but it is, FGS only a system of measuring length or distance, is man made and is therefore only arbitrary and subject to change. There is nothing wrong with measuring things in hands, cubits, rods and perches, armslengths, pieces of string or whatever. The sort of people who get left behind are those who pedantically stick to one thing, be it new or old, and aren't broad minded enough to take in the whole gammut of possiblilites.