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When did BR start using metric on signs?


DavidBird
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34 minutes ago, AndrueC said:

Might be worth reading up on it.;)

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units

 

Nevertheless, with this nearly unversal level of acceptance, the SI system "has been used around the world as the preferred system of units, the basic language for science, technology, industry and trade."

 

Not knowing your species' official system of measurement isn't a good look :D

Finding it, could be a problem!

 

“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

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On 14/08/2021 at 00:54, BernardTPM said:

True, but it diid mean that the marked weight on the wagons wasn't that much different before and after. Yes, the 100 ton tanks were 102 tonnes, but on the smaller wagons the tonne figure was more or less the same as the ton figure for loadings, so the transition wasn't too difficult for those working on the wagonload freight side. If you had a good idea how much of a particular load would weigh a ton, then it would hardy be any different for a tonne.

Much closer in percentage terms than the yard/metre situation.

But it is only by coincidence that they are close, not by design.

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44 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

But it is only by coincidence that they are close, not by design.

Yes, a very convenient coincidenc that made the difference less noticeable for the staff, as I said. They had something they could easily relate to that wasn't that much different from what they were using before.

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1 hour ago, BernardTPM said:

Exactly. The measurement is based on that constant. ANY measurement can be based on that constant.

 

Which would be useless in science unless the extended set of smaller and larger units is defined and related by factors of powers of ten IE. metric.

In the question I asked earlier, Charles de Gaulle height of 196cm is 77 ¹¹/₆₄  fractional inches.

In decimal inches that would be 77.16 inches or 6' 5.16"

The mixing of fractional and decimal in a measurement is clearly a source of confusion in the UK and US that does not exsist in the rest of the World or in science.

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2 hours ago, maico said:

Which would be useless in science unless the extended set of smaller and larger units is defined and related by factors of powers of ten IE. metric.

Science existed before the Metric system was invented. It does make calculations easier though.

 

11/64 is 0.171875.  1/3rd only resolves as a fraction. Some numbers can never be resolved in either fractions or decimals.

 

All still irrelevent as to when BR started using Metric measurements on public warning signs.

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14 hours ago, maico said:

 

Which would be useless in science unless the extended set of smaller and larger units is defined and related by factors of powers of ten IE. metric.

In the question I asked earlier, Charles de Gaulle height of 196cm is 77 ¹¹/₆₄  fractional inches.

In decimal inches that would be 77.16 inches or 6' 5.16"

The mixing of fractional and decimal in a measurement is clearly a source of confusion in the UK and US that does not exsist in the rest of the World or in science.

In SI, the larger and smaller units are related by a factor of 1000, e.g., metre, kilometre, millimetre; gram (not much used!) kilogram, Megagram (tonne), and so on.

 

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On 15/08/2021 at 17:02, Steamport Southport said:

Anyone advocating using Metric should be forced to use metric time and dates! :laugh:

 

 

Yes. It was a thing. Funnily enough Napoleon refused to use it and got rid of it as soon as he could.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar

 

But that article isn't about metric time - it's about decimal time, which I'll admit I never knew existed. They are not the same thing.

 

In the metric system of units, the base unit of time is the second, so it could be argued that even the lovers of imperial units already use metric time. :D In line with other SI units, we should also refer to the millisecond (1/1000 th of a second) and microsecond (1/1,000,000 th of second), which again are widely used metric units.  However, no-one uses the larger kilo-second (16 minutes and 40 seconds) or mega-second (11 days, 13 hours, 46 minutes and 40 seconds).  It's simply much easier to understand if we divide a large number of seconds by 3,600 and call it hours rather than divide it by 1,000 and call it kilo-seconds.

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On 15/08/2021 at 16:52, doilum said:

This is the current definition. When first conceived around 225 years ago, it was based upon the, then calculated size of the earth. One metre was 1/10,000th of the distance from the equator to the north pole.

The fact that this Wikipedia article dates it to 1793 (French Revolution) might indicate a need for more research as I thought it was a bit older and the work of an English man.

 

James Watt proposed a universal metric system in the 1780s to standardise engineering and science. Before that Abbot Gabriel Mouton's book of 1670 was influential 

 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Mouton

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On 16/08/2021 at 04:25, BernardTPM said:

Yes, a very convenient coincidenc that made the difference less noticeable for the staff, as I said. They had something they could easily relate to that wasn't that much different from what they were using before.

Easy to relate to for sure, but the small variation was well within the weight safe limit for the wagon, so was largely irrelevant, from a practical point of view.

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On 12/08/2021 at 06:26, Trog said:

I wish that the zealots on both sides would just let people use which ever set of measurements they preferred. and that the supermarkets labelled stuff using both systems.
 

Thus perpetuating the confusion and largely unnecessary duplication.

Do you still expect prices to be in pounds, shillings and pence, for comparison purposes, to be displayed on the labels in supermarkets and shops?

 

Pounds, pence per Kg versus Pounds, Shilling & Pence per Pound.

 

If not why not? Because that is what's required to give shoppers a choice of old and new.

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8 hours ago, kevinlms said:

Thus perpetuating the confusion and largely unnecessary duplication.

Do you still expect prices to be in pounds, shillings and pence, for comparison purposes, to be displayed on the labels in supermarkets and shops?

 

Pounds, pence per Kg versus Pounds, Shilling & Pence per Pound.

 

If not why not? Because that is what's required to give shoppers a choice of old and new.

Absolutely.  I still convert decimal prices to real money. half a century after the Sterling was decimated.

That's how I know everything is grossly overpriced these days.

I used to be able to get a haircut for one and threepence.

 

Like it or not, we have now left the EU so I can't see why everything still has to be measured in terms of the length of Charles de Gaulle's nose.  Glad I don't model those garlic-eating SNCF engines as 3 1/2 mm to the foot is a right royal pain to work out if your prototype is measured in metric and you have to convert that to feet before you can multiply it by three and a half, and even then the answer is still in metric. 

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1 hour ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Absolutely.  I still convert decimal prices to real money. half a century after the Sterling was decimated.

That's how I know everything is grossly overpriced these days.

I used to be able to get a haircut for one and threepence.

 

Like it or not, we have now left the EU so I can't see why everything still has to be measured in terms of the length of Charles de Gaulle's nose.  Glad I don't model those garlic-eating SNCF engines as 3 1/2 mm to the foot is a right royal pain to work out if your prototype is measured in metric and you have to convert that to feet before you can multiply it by three and a half, and even then the answer is still in metric. 

At the risk of going off thread: Is it over priced?

As a teenager I worked on a fruit and veg market stall in the early 1970s. Three first class golden delicious apples weighed about 1lb and sold for a new fangled 30p. Which was the price of a gallon of petrol. Beer was a pretty universal 12p per pint although after the oil crisis in 74 inflation went into overdrive. Apart from housing costs we have " never had it so good".

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11 hours ago, kevinlms said:

Thus perpetuating the confusion and largely unnecessary duplication.

Do you still expect prices to be in pounds, shillings and pence, for comparison purposes, to be displayed on the labels in supermarkets and shops?

 

Pounds, pence per Kg versus Pounds, Shilling & Pence per Pound.

 

If not why not? Because that is what's required to give shoppers a choice of old and new.

 

As most supermarket labels are printed by computer the effort required to produce labels using both weight systems after the original once and for all programming would be almost zero, so why not do it even if only a small percentage of the population finds it a benefit.  Those so up themselves that seeing the alternate system in use annoys them can just learn to ignore the figures that they are not using. Perhaps consoling themselves that those of the opposite faith are just as annoyed by the display of their favourite system.

 

The LSD argument is not really the same thing as while a pound of cheese is still a pound of cheese, the value of money has changed so much that the only consistently honest monetary policy of governments of both hues since the war is the way coins and notes keep getting smaller, and cheaper looking.  

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2 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Like it or not, we have now left the EU so I can't see why everything still has to be measured in terms of the length of Charles de Gaulle's nose.

 

... but metric units have absolutely nothing to do with the EU.  Nor is any SI unit derived from the length of Charles de Gaulle's nose.  The clue to usage is in the official name - the International System of Units.  First published in 1960, it's the system of units used in just about every country in the world - apart from pockets of Luddites who insist that they don't want to use the same standard as everyone else and would rather use an antiquated system of units purely to be different.  

 

2 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

That's how I know everything is grossly overpriced these days.

I used to be able to get a haircut for one and threepence.

 

... but that's not evidence that things are overpriced today.  I'll hazard a guess that when you could get a haircut for one shilling and three pence, the average man earned less than £1,000 per annum (I don't think the median wage reached £1,000 per annum until the mid to late 1960s).  The average man today earns probably 30 times that, so by your logic, that must mean that today's workers probably work 30 times harder than your generation.  The reality is that the value of a pound (or shilling) reduces over time due to workers expecting a pay rise, which is one of the drivers of inflation.  If you pay someone more and they don't actually work any harder, then the value of the currency will fall.  That therefore means that you need more of that devalued currency to buy the same goods and services. Converting a decimal cost back to pounds, shilling and pence is a totally pointless exercise (other than proving to yourself that you still know how many shillings were in a pound) - it would make much more sense to express historic costs as a proportion of average earnings and compare that to an equivalent calculation today.  Services with a higher labour cost (such as cutting hair) will have risen by a larger proportion than goods which can be produced more cheaply due to technological progress.

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1 hour ago, Trog said:

 

As most supermarket labels are printed by computer the effort required to produce labels using both weight systems after the original once and for all programming would be almost zero, so why not do it even if only a small percentage of the population finds it a benefit.  Those so up themselves that seeing the alternate system in use annoys them can just learn to ignore the figures that they are not using. Perhaps consoling themselves that those of the opposite faith are just as annoyed by the display of their favourite system.

 

The LSD argument is not really the same thing as while a pound of cheese is still a pound of cheese, the value of money has changed so much that the only consistently honest monetary policy of governments of both hues since the war is the way coins and notes keep getting smaller, and cheaper looking.  

Absolutely LSD is exactly the same thing! People thought they were being ripped off when decimal currency came in and yes I do remember that!

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4 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

I used to be able to get a haircut for one and threepence.

 

 

One of the people that think that paying more than one and threepence is a rip off!

 

How sad that some go back to 50 years ago, to judge prices by a completely different set of circumstances.

 

Fact of the matter is, you have a number of choices.

 

1/ Pay the going rate and come on to your favourite forum and moan.

2/ Get someone to cut it for free and come on to your favourite forum and moan, that in the 'olden days' you used to be able to get a better job done, for one and threepence.

3/ Go without and come on to your favourite forum and moan, that you can't get good value for money, like the 'olden days'.

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7 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Absolutely.  I still convert decimal prices to real money. half a century after the Sterling was decimated.

That's how I know everything is grossly overpriced these days.

I used to be able to get a haircut for one and threepence.

 

Like it or not, we have now left the EU so I can't see why everything still has to be measured in terms of the length of Charles de Gaulle's nose.  Glad I don't model those garlic-eating SNCF engines as 3 1/2 mm to the foot is a right royal pain to work out if your prototype is measured in metric and you have to convert that to feet before you can multiply it by three and a half, and even then the answer is still in metric. 

The EU has nothing to do with the operation of the metric system, which most of its members were using long before that organisation was even thought of.

 

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2 hours ago, kevinlms said:

Absolutely LSD is exactly the same thing! People thought they were being ripped off when decimal currency came in and yes I do remember that!

They were! I can remember a bus fare going from 6d to 5p overnight in 1971

 

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3 hours ago, kevinlms said:

Absolutely LSD is exactly the same thing! People thought they were being ripped off when decimal currency came in and yes I do remember that!

 

In some cases they were right, I remember that penny chews went up in price from 1d each or 240 for £1 to  1/2p each or 200 for £1 over night. As this was a major impact on my personal finances at the time.

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On 15/08/2021 at 16:52, doilum said:

This is the current definition. When first conceived around 225 years ago, it was based upon the, then calculated size of the earth. One metre was 1/10,000th of the distance from the equator to the north pole.

 

I seem to remember reading that they got it wrong however, which is why navigation is still done in nautical miles / knots.

 

On 15/08/2021 at 16:38, BernardTPM said:

On that basis, given that is quite an odd fraction of a second, you could just as easily and equally accurately define a foot or a cubit. It doesn't add particular validity to any of them.

 

Is the foot not almost exactly the distance travelled by light in a vacuum in one nano second. ie one light nano second = 0.9836 feet. Could the more religiously inclined amongst us please confirm if this is proof that God loves Imperial measure as well as steam? 

 

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4 hours ago, Trog said:

 

In some cases they were right, I remember that penny chews went up in price from 1d each or 240 for £1 to  1/2p each or 200 for £1 over night. As this was a major impact on my personal finances at the time.

But that is an example of something where an exact conversion wasn't possible, not a case of an opportunity to rip people off.

 

I wonder what percentage of the population would voluntarily go back to LSD? It certainly wouldn't undo inflation, which is what a lot of the complaints on the discussion are really about.

 

I know a bloke who said that he started working for an Australian bank, on the day the country went decimal currency. He said that he'd never want to go back.

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9 hours ago, kevinlms said:

But that is an example of something where an exact conversion wasn't possible, not a case of an opportunity to rip people off.

 

I wonder what percentage of the population would voluntarily go back to LSD? It certainly wouldn't undo inflation, which is what a lot of the complaints on the discussion are really about.

 

I know a bloke who said that he started working for an Australian bank, on the day the country went decimal currency. He said that he'd never want to go back.

 

Buy four get one free would have reasonably fair, with the people only rich enough to buy 1, 2 or 3 making up for the slight difference between 4.8 and 5 for 2p. But no those evil capitalist shop keepers decided to gouge that segment of the population with the least money to start with.   :-)

 

I think that it would make little difference in real life as the value of copper coins is now so low that they are almost irrelevant, so most of the time you would never notice the difference between 20 shillings to the pound and 20 5p coins to the pound.

 

Interesting as I had heard that Australia was a good place to visit.

 

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17 hours ago, kevinlms said:

I wonder what percentage of the population would voluntarily go back to LSD? 

 

Certainly not me ! I am eternally grateful that by the time I started on BR as a Booking Clerk LSD was history.

 

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1 hour ago, caradoc said:

 

Certainly not me ! I am eternally grateful that by the time I started on BR as a Booking Clerk LSD was history.

 

 

Got a locking diff but not limited slip

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