Thread: Measurements Metric English Imperial

Australia: Imperial
UK: The old system
Canada: Imperial
USA: What? There is another system?

Technically it's the Imperial System, as defined in the UK Weights and Measures Act. For reasons of their own, probably because they didn't like the tone of the word "Imperial", the yanks apparently prefer to call it the English System.

Originally Posted by Frank&Earnest

USA: What? There is another system?

That says it all!!!

I was once working on a survey crew. We used feet and tenths. Our Party Chief was fond of saying that the only people that used feet and inches was carpenters

Originally Posted by Frank&Earnest

USA: What? There is another system?

Whatever you do, Dont Mention the Mars Climate Orbiter http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric/

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I reckon they used the 3' 6" and 17 mill tapes like
http://www.woodworkforums.ubeaut.com...ad.php?t=58127


.

Originally Posted by Blocklayer

Whatever you do, Dont Mention the Mars Climate Orbiter http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric/

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I reckon they used the 3' 6" and 17 mill tapes like
http://www.woodworkforums.ubeaut.com...ad.php?t=58127


.

No, no, that was undercover Martians stuffing it up so that we do not discover their superior civilisation!

I'll have a 'Le Royal with cheese' please.

Originally Posted by Blocklayer

Whatever you do, Dont Mention the Mars Climate Orbiter http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric/

I use the term inches to infer feet and inches when talking to americans. At work and in my woodshop we use the decimal inch. Finding a tape measure in decimal inches is a chore though.

I've often wondered... are a smidgin, a tad and an RCH considered imperial or metric?

Andy this should help

Originally Posted by Elbow

Andy this should help

Thanks for that.

Sounds like an interesting character.
You learn something every day eh.

I'm old enough to remember and like "imperial".

I would use one of the follwoing (in my order of preference):

1. Feet and inches
2. Imperial and US
3. The Other System

I just refer to the old system as "inches"

John they had an exhibition of all his inventions, chain stretcher, concrete bender etc, at the old Glenelg Town Hall, took a while for the penny to drop, but check out his surname
Allan

I'd never heard of the guy, but there's a handful of websites that mention him and his book which you can still buy apparently; Henry Hoke's Guide to the Misguided. There’s even a Henry Hoke Award for “the most courageous solution to a difficult sales problem”

I cobbled together the following information from several websites:

Few people know of the work of Henry Hoke, the universal fix-it man and inventor who recently passed away, leaving behind a shed full of his life's work. Henry Hoke, through his Hoke's Tool Company, was (potentially, at least) our own Thomas Edison : to the end a sceptical, energetic man whose intellect ranged far and wide over the broadest field of human endeavour imaginable and even, at times, beyond.

Hoke is not a household name in this country - but he should be according to curator Mark Thomson, author of 'Blokes & Sheds' and 'Rare Trades'. "When Henry passed away recently, he left behind a shed full of baffling and enigmatic objects or the packages they may have come in," says Mr Thomson, who is the Advanced Research Director at the slightly prestigious Australasian Institute of Backyard Studies. Mr Thomson brings to light his wonderful array of baffling tools - inventions that seem to defy the laws of physics such as the Concrete Bender. "... all we have of Hoke's Smoke Hammer, for instance, is a cardboard box and a few instructions. The hammer itself appears to have floated away. Other packaging, included an empty ceramic container for Dehydrated Water Pills, and a bottle labelled DiHydrogen Monoxide. There are also a few 'adults only' items including Hoke's Population Tool and Electrician's Trouser Snake. His celebrated packets of Spark Plug Sparks are of course useless if opened in normal light. Luckily we still have one of his Tuning Pipes for a Ship's Foghorn, several of his glass hammers and quite a few packets of rubber screws and pointless nails."

I wonder if he’s the first to coin the formulaic term DiHydrogen Monoxide. Wikipedia has the earliest reference at 1989
He sounds like a pretty switched on dude anyway , but of course if he didn't have a sense of humour, then he could have been just a totally spaced out crackpot.

He's worth a good laugh either way though. Thanks for the heads up Allan.