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Thursday, October 27, 2005
Is decimalisation just dumbing down
Now that Ireland has moved to kilometers for speed limits, it seems like a good time to remember what we are leaving behind and consider: WHY?
Did you know that there were/are 4 perches in a chain, 10 chains in a furlong. (There are no marks for know that there are 8 furlong in a mile.)
I remember doing arithmetic with chains and perches in school. It was mysterious when I was 11 - and now its still mysterious.
If you are curious, consider this: 63360 inches
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A colleague (recently departed) was passionate about metric measures. It irritated him severally if anyone used inch of feet or mile "what’s a foot/mile" would be his immediate retort. He'd also insist on tell you his height in centimeters. Well It lead to many interesting discussions (interesting when you should be busy doing something else) about measures and standards etc. Wikipedia has a wealth of information on the subject. A favorite of ours was the furlongs per micro-fortnight. For the interested (or insane) a furlong per fortnight is a barely noticeable 0.166 millimetres per second. Working out a furlongs per microfortnight is an exercise for the reader.
We won’t even get into what happened if some one mentioned GMT (since there is no such thing since 1972) or fluid ounce (of which there are 3 standards - each more bizarre then the last).
I think that colleague seethed internally almost as much about spelling and punctuation, but that was just him being pedantic :)
In theory, anyway, there should be no need to be passionate about metric measures, and those remembering the old measures should be either elderly historians or cranks in their own right.
We in Ireland have been legally using only metric measures for many years, and teaching only these in schools. The recent change in units for speed-limit signs probably signals the last legal use of any obsolete British units.
Sure metric is easier - but its just a lot duller.
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