In 1971, Australia converted from the Imperial measurement system to metric. That was 39 years ago.
In fact, the last babies to be weighed and registered in pounds will turn 40 next year – happy birthday to you. And as far as I know anyone who started school from 1971 onwards learned metric as the only measurement system in Australia.
I didn’t ever learn Imperial at school. I only learned conversion rates when I had a child. Up until then I’d bought a kilo of fish, 500 grams of ham and 2 kilograms of potatoes.
When you have a child everyone asks how much the child weighed at birth. But if you give them the weight in kilograms (and they know how heavy a kilogram is, they go to the gym and do arm work, they buy potatoes, they put flea treatments on their 4.5kg cat) they will ask you what that weight is in pounds.
I am mystified that rather than telling people there are 2.2 pounds per kilogram, perhaps they could work it out themselves? These new mothers sit down and calculate their baby’s weight in pounds and from that day on, they know the weight of their child in metric and Imperial. Clearly the happy hormones are still working for them.
I assume the phenomenon of reverting to pounds to explain a baby’s weight comes down to our mothers. When I told my mother my baby was 3.85kg she had to take a moment to calculate it out before she said: “That’s small compared with you. You were 10 pounds 2 ounces! I’m still in pain.”
This weird love of Imperial stretches to our height. I’m 5 feet 10 inches according to my parents. But my drivers’ license says I’m 175cm. No one gets the concept that 175cm is tall. But five-ten is tall.
Maybe we should create a new measurement: the John Eales. Eales is the height of a doorway (according to Peter Fitzsimmons), which in the building code standards is 2metres. Got that? Well, I’m 25cm shorter than John Eales.
I enjoy programs from the UK, in particular Top Gear. I am constantly calculating the miles per hour to kilometres per hour. I love the challenge The Biggest Loser UK gives me to calculate the person’s weight into metric before the banner comes across the screen. (There are 14 pounds per stone, 2.2 pounds per kilogram…. Oh, dear.)
So I’m ok to accept that people of a certain generation will continue to think in Imperial – my parents being two examples. But I will not accept the use of inches or feet by industry. More and more this is creeping into Australia.
There was a time when it was illegal to buy a tape measure with inches and feet on it because the government was determined that Australia would adopt the new metric system.
Patchworkers, sewers and knitters depending on patterns from the United States were the hardest hit by this move, so the government gave in to the craft vote and re-introduced the dual measuring tapes. You don’t want to mess with those stitch ‘n’ bitch women.
I was driving behind a taxi specifically for the disabled this morning. There was a sticker on the back of this vehicle – “Do not park within 8 feet”. Remember, Australia has had 39 years to get used to metric. They should know by now that 2½ metres is John Eales with a child on his shoulders.
I’ve been repainting a couple of rooms and doing feature walls, so I bought that blue tape to ensure I got a good straight line. That blue tape comes in 1 inch width rolls.
One brand of paintbrush comes nicely packaged in cardboard but its size is marked in Imperial. I picked up one for edgework but it was 3 inches wide. Clearly it was the wrong brush for fine work near the edges, I wanted a 3cm brush.
The tape should be marked 2.5cm. The paintbrush should be marked 7.5cm. That’s that. I don’t want to hear that painters work in imperial, they don’t. They buy their paint in litres not quarts. They calculate wall sizes in metric, so they can buy 2.5cm tape or 7.5cm brushes.
This neo-imperialism is ridiculous. I don’t know if it’s bending to the US or laziness on the part of Australian subsidiaries in repackaging or marking products sold in Australia, but it must stop.
A little further down the hardware shop, masonry bits are sold with the two measurements on them. If that blue tape has to have its size in Imperial, it should be marked in metric as well.
And the only reason we should be talking about feet, is after shoes are thrown.
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