50 Years Ago Today, the Metric Conversion (kinda) Started

digitalfutur

With temperatures broadcast in C as well as F. After the Celsius switch, rain and snow accumulations went metric later in 1975. Schools began to teach metric exclusively that September. Cars and road signs made the change in 1977. Gasoline was sold by the litre in 1979.

But watch that oven temperature and those wheel sizes ! But as any home car mechanic knows, the standard socket size is 10 mm for smaller jobs.

Vive la différence !

[deleted]

It was before my time, but I absolutely hate the mess we have.

We measure speed and distance in metric.
Building materials are all imperial.
Car fasteners are mostly metric by now I think.
We all state our height and width in feet/inches & pounds.
Temperature is celsius.

Bloody mess, even though i believe metric is a better system, but they should have stuck with what the Americans keep using.

[deleted]

digitalfutur But watch that oven temperature and those wheel sizes

I’m pretty sure they use the same wheel size everywhere, rim size in inches, width in mm.

ElQuintron

digitalfutur

The Metric system is superior, and we should keep using in science, education and on official documentation, but there’s no reason to ban it in colloquial usage, like they attempted to in Britain in the early 2000s.

digitalfutur

[deleted] Yep, even in Europe.

https://tyremasterpro.eu/

Avernar

[deleted]

Avernar

[deleted] I’m pretty sure they use the same wheel size everywhere, rim size in inches, width in mm.

Don’t forget the ratio! While it relates two metric values, it does not have a unit itself.

urbanriot

We’re still ‘ambidextrous’ with temperature because our local news is American, we have Celsius on our mobile devices while hearing Fahrenheit on TV for the weather report.

I’d say it wasn’t until the late 90s or so that I really started using metric, mostly influenced by the internet.

GreenEnvy22

It is a weird mishmash for sure.
I couldn’t tell you what the outside temp is in F on any given day, but when I’m brewing beer or baking bread, it’s always in F. I have started converting all the quantities in my beer recipes over to measure in metric though. Just so much easier then lbs and oz. i still find myself saying i brew in 5 gallon batches, rather than 19L.

Same for baking, metric is just so much easier (though the best tip is to do everything by weight, not using volume).

It’s interesting too the ‘phrases’ we use even if we don’t use the units. Like I might say “it goes on for miles and miles”, even though I don’t use miles for anything.

And no we shouldn’t have stuck with what the US did. There is a good reason there are only 2-3 countries left in the world not using Metric as their primary system.

MichelR

Some of my European friends were really confused when visiting, with our mix of metric and imperial. Got lots of questions! Most of them had no clue about imperial measurements.

I read somewhere that full conversion was gradual and mandatory, but the PC took out the “mandatory” part in the mid-80s, so some sectors didn’t bother going further. I was telling a friend in the U.S. that it might be another generation or two before the mess is cleaned up, but seeing as teenagers are also using both, it’s quite entrenched. So yeah, I guess we’ll be “bilingual” past any of us here are dead. Then again, if I could predict the future, I’d play the winning lottery number, so…

px_eliezer_

[deleted] Bloody mess, even though i believe metric is a better system, but they should have stuck with what the Americans keep using.

We Americans do have one strange Metric usage—the 2-liter bottles for Pepsi and for Coca-Cola.

Pepsi started this, also about 50 years ago, as a marketing ploy, then Coke followed.
https://www.tastingtable.com/814372/why-is-soda-sold-by-the-liter/

In Great Britain, beer is STILL sold in pints, and this will remain.

Britain’s House of Lords voted Wednesday to ensure pubs can still serve beer in pints — a cherished measure (of just over half a litre) that survived the country’s switch to the metric system from 1965.
https://fortune.com/europe/2025/03/06/threat-metrication-british-lords-pass-legal-safeguard-pint-of-beer-brexit/
March 6, 2025

px_eliezer_

MichelR Some of my European friends were really confused when visiting, with our mix of metric and imperial. Got lots of questions! Most of them had no clue about imperial measurements.

Obviously not British then, Great Britain is still very hybrid.

Being that Imperial is the British Imperial, not a surprise.

In perhaps a small way, these issues contributed to Brexit.

Likewise of course the Metric system is a direct spinoff of the French Revolution (the 1789 one) so not surprising that it is favored in Europe outside of Great Britain…
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20180923-how-france-created-the-metric-system

Donoreo

[deleted] Bloody mess, even though i believe metric is a better system, but they should have stuck with what the Americans keep using.

That is usually my indicator of what NOT to do 🙂

Dks01

px_eliezer_ In Canada, Pepsi started the big bottle war in the mid 1970’s (1974-75, I think) with the 52.8 oz/1.5L Big Boss in glass bottles, which were not recyclable. I recall working in a grocery store back then and someone stacking six or eight cases of Big Boss Pepsi in the back room and the stack tipping over. That was where I learned that Pepsi and Coke were absolutely perfect for cleaning concrete floors.

Dks01

urbanriot Ambidextrous? We swing both ways. AC/DC, eh?

Hydraglass

px_eliezer_ Brits are almost as funny as us - temperature in C, distance and speed in MPH, volume in imperial gallons OR liters depending what they are doing, How much do you weigh? 15 STONES!?!?! Oh yeah a Stone is 14 pounds.. Beer in pints? Oh yeah but a british pint - 20 ounces (1/8th of a 4.54L gallon, not the north american 3.8L gallon) – so it’s not surprising that those of us who are linked to the monarchy and the old british empire still are all confused. I’m curious what Australia is like these days - it’s been 25 years since I was there and there was still a lot of imperial floating around there then.

Kathy_9

Serious question. ElQuintron and [deleted]

Why do you think metric is superior?

I only know Imperial because that is what I grew up with along with speaking English. To me, switching to Metric would be like learning a second language and I have to tell you my French is really bad. What I remember from 2 years of French in high school is very little.

px_eliezer_

Kathy_9

I’ll take a go at it.

Metric is more logical because it is all based on 10, and our whole system of numbers is also based on 10.

That’s a Captain Obvious point of course.

But a parallel example would be that decimal currency is much easier to deal with than the old British system of money.

Until 1971, British money was divided up into pounds, shillings and pence.

>One pound was divided into 20 shillings.
>One shilling was divided into 12 pennies.
>One penny was divided into two halfpennies, or four farthings.   
>There were therefore 240 pennies in a pound.

https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/researchguidance/weightsandmeasures/money.aspx

 For further confusion, a crown was a denomination of sterling coinage worth a quarter of one pound (five shillings, or sixty (old) pence).

Obviously very cumbersome.

For MORE confusion—

India (and many other countries) use commas very differently from Canada and the USA.

And India also has their OWN system in common use:

Crore = ten million (or one hundred lakhs).

Lakh = one hundred thousand.

Anyway compared to all this narishkeit (Yiddish for foolishness etc) the Metric system is simple.

Canada is ideally metric with 10 provinces.

The problem with people trying to adapt to metric is that they try to CONVERT everything in their heads.

That’s the wrong approach.

Just DO it, don’t CONVERT.

This is AFAIK the approach that the language companies (eg Rosetta Stone) use.

I wish I knew that in high school when trying to learn Spanish.

Instead of seeing a bowl of ice cream, and converting ICE CREAM —-> HELADO, it is more efficient to see the bowl and DIRECTLY think “HELADO”.

Same with adapting to metric.

Avernar

Kathy_9 Why do you think metric is superior?

Metric: There are 10 millimeters in a centimetre. There are 100 centimetres in a meter. There are 1000 meters in a kilometre. Just move the decimal point to convert.

Imperial: There are 12 inches in a foot. There are 3 feet in a yard. There are 1760 yards in a Mile. Get the calculator out to convert.

Relate video:

Avernar

px_eliezer_ But a parallel example would be that decimal currency is much easier to deal with than the old British system of money.

But Penny Farthing is fun to say.