The EU seemed to think that British people couldn't handle two measurement systems and demanded 'decimalisation' - I still remember my grandmother struggling with 'New Pence'. Now that Britain is free of the EU I think a return to the use of Imperial measurements would be a fitting reminder to future generations of British independence.
Decimal currency had diddley squat to do with the EU or even the Common Market. The idea of a base ten currency was first floated before Queen Victoria ascended the throne.
Its adoption in the UK followed a Committee of inquiry in the sixties and the proposal was adopted in 1966 when De Gaulle's veto ended immediate hopes of joining the Common Market.
Metrication followed a similar route.
I am 62 and we stopped using imperial units when I was in primary one (year three in modern parlance) when we got new textbooks etc as a precursor to D day in 1971.
We Brits can't make our minds up on the units, given we still use pints for drinks, feet and inches, though mainly for measuring people or shorter distances, plus, of course, miles for road distances / speed and stones for weight.
A recent sort-of changeover is car manufacturers using the 'metric' PS instead of BHP and Nm rather than lb.ft, though technically kW and Nm (as is used in Australia, which also uses km for road distances / speed) respectively should be used. We still use mpg rather than L/100km (or miles) though.
It's really only in STEM and the technical / financial side of business and the public sector that metrification has taken over.
Even so, my 'old' industry (Building Services Engineering) still has all their pipe and duct sizes based on the imperial originals and not decimals, probably because of the difficulties of changing over the entire world's plumbing and ventilation systems for little (if any) gain.
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When I was at school in the late 1950s/early 1960s I had obviously grown up with Imperial units.
The Metric system we were taught and used in science subjects was the CGS (centimetre gram second) system.
This was superseded by the MKS (metre kilogram second) version in which these are the preferred SI units.
Personally, I prefer the CGS, measuring everyday objects Metres are inconveniently large and the preferred smaller unit is the millimetre, inconveniently small.
The great virtue of Imperial measures that for everyday purposes they had evolved over centuries as useful sizes (pints of drink, pounds of fruit and vegetables, feet and inches)
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As long as people know how and remember to convert them from one to the other - remember when that NASA Mars orbiter crashed into the planet instead of going into orbit because someone from Lockheed Martin forgot NASA was using SI metric units...
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When I was at school in the late 1950s/early 1960s I had obviously grown up with Imperial units.
The Metric system we were taught and used in science subjects was the CGS (centimetre gram second) system.
This was superseded by the MKS (metre kilogram second) version in which these are the preferred SI units.
Personally, I prefer the CGS, measuring everyday objects Metres are inconveniently large and the preferred smaller unit is the millimetre, inconveniently small.
The great virtue of Imperial measures that for everyday purposes they had evolved over centuries as useful sizes (pints of drink, pounds of fruit and vegetables, feet and inches)
I was taught mainly in Imperial with a smattering of metric. Fortunately I was educated in the days when teachers taught the 'three Rs' and not the '100 genders' so consequently my maths skills are good enough that I can easily use both systems and convert between the two. Moreover my wife and I live most of the year overseas so use metric quantities everyday. We have no choice. That's not the point though. As someone who campaigned long and hard to see a free and independent Great Britain I think its important that our Imperial measurements are brought back into daily use. It seems Boris thinks the same way and in fact yesterday I read that the law is going to be changed to bring back Imperial measurements into daily life - so the argument is won!! Well done Boris!
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What really would confuse Johnny Foreigner would be to get rid of this modern standard time rubbish and allow towns to set their own local time once again.
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Rees-Mogg thinks (or thought) it was a good idea:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16611058
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What really would confuse Johnny Foreigner would be to get rid of this modern standard time rubbish and allow towns to set their own local time once again.
Of all the 'harking back to Imperial do-dahs', that is the most unlikely, as we already changed to what became GMT across the entire UK well over a hundred years ago, probably at the best of business and the train companies.
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As someone who campaigned long and hard to see a free and independent Great Britain I think its important that our Imperial measurements are brought back into daily use. It seems Boris thinks the same way and in fact yesterday I read that the law is going to be changed to bring back Imperial measurements into daily life - so the argument is won!! Well done Boris!
With everything going on in the country and round the world this is what he spends him time sorting out...sigh. Certainly not a well done from me, just a waste of time.
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"As someone who campaigned long and hard to see a free and independent Great Britain I think its important that our Imperial measurements are brought back into daily use. It seems Boris thinks the same way and in fact yesterday I read that the law is going to be changed to bring back Imperial measurements into daily life - so the argument is won!! Well done Boris!"
It's a vacuous move, an attempt at a populist appeal designed to distract from the stench emanating from No 10 at the moment.
I have no problem with the two systems (imperial and decimal) running next to each other (as to a certain extent they already do), except that if that becomes a legal requirement for retailers it will involve a lot of unnecessary work.
What about money? The effort required add, subtract, multiply and divide money in pounds, shillings and pence, in which there are three columns with a maximum number of 11 and 19 in two of them, is a pointless waste of time, as is the calculation of percentages. Actually, I don't believe even this government would be quite so stupid as to revert to non-decimal money.
P.S. I find the '100 genders' comment highly distasteful.
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P.S. I find the '100 genders' comment highly distasteful.
On the other side of the coin, a great deal of people believe '100 genders' is equally so.
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P.S. I find the '100 genders' comment highly distasteful.
On the other side of the coin, a great deal of people believe '100 genders' is equally so.
I don't find it distasteful - I just find the whole topic rather weird. 99%+ of the population are born either M or F, as determined by cell chromosomes, which no-one (yet) can do anything to change. A small number of people feel uncomfortable with what they have been given and wish to adopt another role. I suspect some of this is a fad triggered by social media and encouraged by an excess of wokeness. With luck it may die out in time.
One thing I do challenge is the suggestion to tamper with what is on an official birth certificate, which is a record of what happened on an important date in history.
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I don't find it distasteful - I just find the whole topic rather weird. 99%+ of the population are born either M or F, as determined by cell chromosomes, which no-one (yet) can do anything to change. A small number of people feel uncomfortable with what they have been given and wish to adopt another role. I suspect some of this is a fad triggered by social media and encouraged by an excess of wokeness. With luck it may die out in time.
One thing I do challenge is the suggestion to tamper with what is on an official birth certificate, which is a record of what happened on an important date in history.
I know, or know of, four people who are transitioning or have transitioned.
One held a public appointment after retiring from the Senior Civil Service. They had, apparently been uncomfortable as a male in their youth but back in the sixties had no outlet. So they seem to have knuckled down, got on with their life and career including marrying and having children.
Widowed and retired they transitioned to a female name and pronouns etc. The final effect for those who observed the whole three plus year process, was a bit Alastair Sim as Lady Bracknell but I'm not sure somebody observing anew would catch the point.
The want/need to transition isn't new;the late April Ashley did it years ago. Of course Social Media and the opportunity to discuss stuff openly and in a supportive environment means far less reticence than was the case in the sixties exemplified above.
There is a worrying trend among teenaged girls in particular and there's a need to sort out how the process is managed.
As to altering birth certificates what's the issue? The Gender Recognition Act was the result of a lot of campaigning by Trans people who had to disclose their history on any number of occasions where ID was at issue. There's now a properly regulated process in place. If it's now thought too formal and over medicalised then policy makers need to work out what to replace it with.
I don't understand why anybody would think the principle unsound. What risk is there to others and what right of yours is impinged by the person mentioned above having a birth certificate in their chosen gender?
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<< As someone who campaigned long and hard to see a free and independent Great Britain I think its important that our Imperial measurements are brought back into daily use. It seems Boris thinks the same way and in fact yesterday I read that the law is going to be changed to bring back Imperial measurements into daily life - so the argument is won!! Well done Boris! >>
IMHO anyone who still claims the virtue of such odd sentiments should take a running jump into a nice cold bath. It's not clear to me that Boris actually thinks about anything much, except what he believes his public wants to hear him say. Which he usually has forgotten about some days later. The usefulness and advantage of GB's 'independence' still needs a lot of clarification - if we want to sell into Europe, imperial units won't be seen as useful.
There is no point in working to reintroduce imperial units - the useful ones are still around and will probably remain for a good while. However I do take exception to the disappearance of the word 'ton', which is not quite the same as a 'tonne' which everyone apparently now has to use.
Edited by Andrew-T on 31/05/2022 at 12:36
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I was 8 when metric coinage was introduced and I'm quite capable of using feet or metres. Sometimes I even use both on the same job if that's what fits best. But I'd hate to go back to pounds shillings and pence. Needlessly complicated. Plus as we had a veto on EU rules and all the EU stuff had to be passed into legislation by elected bodies it gets my goat when people say we weren't free when in the EU.
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Iit gets my goat when people say we weren't free when in the EU.
It's because a lot of people did not really understand anything about the EU or how it worked.
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The veto right largely vanished when the EU was created, replaced by qualified majority voting.
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The veto right largely vanished when the EU was created, replaced by qualified majority voting.
The UK could veto anything it did not want.
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The veto right largely vanished when the EU was created, replaced by qualified majority voting.
The UK could veto anything it did not want.
Yup. No problem at all. And like I said all laws were ratified by democratically elected parliaments
Edited by Crickleymal on 01/06/2022 at 01:33
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And as Alan correctly wrote, a lot of people did not really understand anything about the EU or how it worked.
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I find imperial units utterly confusing.
We buy fuel in L but measure economy in MPG !!!
Kilogram is far easier to understand than stone/ounce etc.
I even set my sat nav to display km instead of miles.
If a place is shown 200 km away and using motorway, I can quickly estimate it will take to reach there 2 hours roughly as average motorway speed is 100 km/h or 60 MPH.
Except UK & USA, no one else uses imperial system. Even in USA, NASA uses metric system.
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Except UK & USA, no one else uses imperial system.
I think the historical reason for that is that those countries dominated the global export trade, UK in the 19th century, US in the 20th. Buyers had to take what was offered. It's hard to change the habits of a lifetime. Napoleon (allegedly) converted the continent to the metric system and driving on the right.
But the US is now the most 'imperial' nation. I can't understand why they use pounds to measure quantities of bulk items which we would quote in ton(ne)s.
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Football is played world wide. The penalty sport is 12 Yards from the goal line and other marking are Imperial but I suspect someone somewhere is doing a conversion or perhaps using a yard stick!
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I don't think anyone has mentioned the figures which define the size of tyres ?
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I don't think anyone has mentioned the figures which define the size of tyres ?
Yes that's a good one
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Since half the votes of IFAB are UK bodies, it is hardly surprising that non-metric values are used, although they are in parentheses.
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I find imperial units utterly confusing.
We buy fuel in L but measure economy in MPG !!!
Kilogram is far easier to understand than stone/ounce etc.
I even set my sat nav to display km instead of miles.
If a place is shown 200 km away and using motorway, I can quickly estimate it will take to reach there 2 hours roughly as average motorway speed is 100 km/h or 60 MPH.
Except UK & USA, no one else uses imperial system. Even in USA, NASA uses metric system.
If a place is 200 miles away you can quickly estimate the time to reach it by dividing 200 by 60 ie. 3 hours and 20 minutes.
However I do agree with you about weights and currency.
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"Even so, my 'old' industry (Building Services Engineering) still has all their pipe and duct sizes based on the imperial originals and not decimals, probably because of the difficulties of changing over the entire world's plumbing and ventilation systems for little (if any) gain"
You may not know that even in France, who created the metric system, threaded pipe fittings are actually BSP, but in order to fool themselves into thinking it's French, they call them up in a metric way.
For example an 1 " BSP threaded fitting they refer to as 26/34
Presumably the 26 is the ID of the pipe and 34 is the OD.
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If, like me, you think the UK should revert to using Imperial measurements you might like to join the following organisation and actively challenge metrication:
www.activeresistance.org.uk
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If, like me, you think the UK should revert to using Imperial measurements you might like to join the following organisation and actively challenge metrication:
www.activeresistance.org.uk
No one has ever been able to show a good reason to revert to Imperal measurements - what would the point be?
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Britain actually considered going metric back in Queen Victoria's reign. The USA is a signatory of the original metric standards pact. And all their imperial measurements are based on metric standards.
Given that the vast majority of the populace were educated in the metric system I really cannot see any purpose in going back to an archaic and frankly bonkers system.
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If, like me, you think the UK should revert to using Imperial measurements you might like to join the following organisation and actively challenge metrication:
www.activeresistance.org.uk
No one has ever been able to show a good reason to revert to Imperal measurements - what would the point be?
Imperial measurements are part of our British heritage and history. They are perfect for everyday use. It was only the Stalinist EU which stopped us from using them. Here is an excellent article by Peter Hitchens:
www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10876871/PETER-...l
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He makes the point that both systems can co-exist. I will stick to metric, when I weigh myself on the bathroom scales kgs means something as I can relate to a bag of sand I buy in Wickes being 25kg or the apples I by are in 1 kg bag. Stones are something found in the garden to me.
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They will have to find a term to replace "imperial" first.
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If, like me, you think the UK should revert to using Imperial measurements you might like to join the following organisation and actively challenge metrication:
www.activeresistance.org.uk
No one has ever been able to show a good reason to revert to Imperal measurements - what would the point be?
Imperial measurements are part of our British heritage and history. They are perfect for everyday use. It was only the Stalinist EU which stopped us from using them. Here is an excellent article by Peter Hitchens:
www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10876871/PETER-...l
Something that is part of heritage and history is not a reason to bring them back and the article you posted even says they can co-exist, which they do now as you can buy items with the KG and LBS on.
Saying they are perfect for everyday use makes no sense either as Metres/Centimetres/mm are fine for everyday as well.
I think most people seem to want them back as they think they look like they are putting two fingers up to the Eu - when it just makes them look petty and silly and am sure the EU could not care less.
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<< Imperial measurements are part of our British heritage and history. >>
Can't dispute that, but do you still use bushels, perches or drachms by choice ?
<< They are perfect for everyday use. >>
Well, you can divide feet or yards by 3 into round numbers, yes. But it's much harder to make mistakes when all you need do in a metric system is to shift a decimal point. So no, they aren't 'perfect for everyday use' though I personally am happy to - occasionally. And working in sixteenths of an inch gets tedious - probably why engineers use thous (well, well, that's metric ... ) :-)
<< It was only the Stalinist EU which stopped us from using them. >>
A ludicrous remark, hardly worth comment. Anyway we still use pints and refuse to give up gallons, don't we ?
<< Here is an excellent article by Peter Hitchens: >>
Say no more.
Edited by Andrew-T on 07/06/2022 at 09:54
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If, like me, you think the UK should revert to using Imperial measurements you might like to join the following organisation and actively challenge metrication:
www.activeresistance.org.uk
No one has ever been able to show a good reason to revert to Imperal measurements - what would the point be?
Apparently it's easier to divide the unit by two. Personally speaking, I'm happy to leave things as they are now and most people are comfortable with, i.e. a mix of the two for general use, but for STEM / tech applications, stay with metric except where imperial measurements (e.g. nautical miles or the 'metric equivalent' pipe and duct sizes in construction) are used worldwide.
If my local grocer or market stall holder wants to use lbs and oz, then fine by me. Not that hard to convert to metric really. Most people still use mpg rather than L/100km in the UK, but as above, everyone can use what they want. I'm used to buying petrol in Litres.
I personally think that all the hubbub (governmentally) is being used as a diversionary tactic from negative publicity on other issues. Most people don't care enough for it to make that much of a fuss to change one way or the other.
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Can anyone explain why a "hundredweight" is not 100 lbs?
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Can anyone explain why a "hundredweight" is not 100 lbs?
The US hundredweight (short hundredweight) is in fact 100 lbs.
The English hundredweight was historically defined as 8 stones. In 1340 King Edward III changed the definition of the stone to 14 pounds making one cental weight (CWT - hundredweight) equal 112 lbs.
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The US hundredweight (short hundredweight) is in fact 100 lbs.
So our imperial measures are not even the same as those used in the world's other stronghold of non metric measures?
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The US hundredweight (short hundredweight) is in fact 100 lbs.
So our imperial measures are not even the same as those used in the world's other stronghold of non metric measures?
No, the American gallon is five-sixths of an imperial gallon. And why I think their bottle of whisky is called a 'fifth' IIRC ?
Edited by Andrew-T on 07/06/2022 at 10:00
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The US hundredweight (short hundredweight) is in fact 100 lbs.
So our imperial measures are not even the same as those used in the world's other stronghold of non metric measures?
No, the American gallon is five-sixths of an imperial gallon. And why I think their bottle of whisky is called a 'fifth' IIRC ?
I understood that the US gallon was the English wine-gallon.
A post above states that dividing metric units is "easy, all you have to do is move the decimal point"
The ease of moving decimal points has led to engineering disasters and fatalities due to overdoses of medication.
A wrongly positioned point is less obvious than inches where feet or yards are intended.
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<< The ease of moving decimal points has led to engineering disasters and fatalities due to overdoses of medication. A wrongly positioned point is less obvious than inches where feet or yards are intended. >>
Mistakes can be made with any system, but at least moving a decimal point doesn't require mental arithmetic. Perhaps the worst errors are when both systems have been used, either deliberately or accidentally ?
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<< The ease of moving decimal points has led to engineering disasters and fatalities due to overdoses of medication. A wrongly positioned point is less obvious than inches where feet or yards are intended. >>
Mistakes can be made with any system, but at least moving a decimal point doesn't require mental arithmetic. Perhaps the worst errors are when both systems have been used, either deliberately or accidentally ?
The number of times I found more junior engineers had not done any check (including via mental arithmetic) of calculations, especially those where they used 'calculation programs', where the answers were seriously incorrect...
Most of the problems were:
Missing or putting a demical point in the wrong place;
Mistyping an input, whether in the wrong box or transposing the numbers;
Forgetting to input a number at all and leaving a box blank or with the default figure.
Whilst experience would in most circs give the user a good clue as to whether they've made a mistake, it isn't always a good guide to what that mistake is. To many youngsters just bowl ahead to try and get the work done quickly to impress the boss.
Sadly many bosses don't want middle-ranking engineers to check work of subordinates because it 'costs too much', at least if you do it during normal working hours.
Being good at mental arithmetic or at the very least doing a hand calc to check is always good.
That supposed scientists and engineers at the 'top of their professions' at NASA failed to do this on that fateful Mars mission, leading to the probe crashing into the atmosphere/planet just shows how things ain't as good as they used to be. Better tech, but sometimes badly used.
Rubbish in ---> rubbish out.
No checks on work: then you only have yourselves to blame if it is incorrect.
Many a company I've worked for has paid a high price for this sort of cost-cutting, and was one of the reasons why I left Construction.
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>No, the American gallon is five-sixths of an imperial gallon. And why I think their bottle of whisky is called a 'fifth' IIRC ?
I had assumed that the US gallon was simply 8 US pints, i.e. 8 x 16 fl. oz, rather than 8 x 20, so 4/5 of the British gallon.
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>No, the American gallon is five-sixths of an imperial gallon. And why I think their bottle of whisky is called a 'fifth' IIRC ?
I had assumed that the US gallon was simply 8 US pints, i.e. 8 x 16 fl. oz, rather than 8 x 20, so 4/5 of the British gallon.
That is what one would naturally assume - while also assuming equal fluid ounces ... :-)
Have a look at Wikipedia.
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Must be a first where something American is official smaller than in the UK... :-)
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Aargh ... so a floz is not a floz. Now you will be saying there are different litres depending on which country.
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So nothing to do with it being 50 kg (give or take) then?
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So nothing to do with it being 50 kg (give or take) then?
A cental in Germany is 50kg. In France 49kg etc - varIes by country.
An Imperial hundredweight is 50.8kg.
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Exactly. A hundredweight was a continental measure (actually a Zentner in Germany).
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Exactly. A hundredweight was a continental measure (actually a Zentner in Germany).
No. A hundredweight is a British measure. Defined as 8 stones. In 1340 the stone was redefined as 14 lbs rather than 12 1/2 lbs - making a hundredweight 112lbs.
In Europe there were various 'hundredweights' copied from the British measure but not based on British units. Most commonly known as the quintal or centum. The German Zentner just means 100 units - the units varied with time and place. So a Zentner in Germany is nowadays 50kg, but in Austria and Switzerland it is 100kg.
Edited by Rerepo on 07/06/2022 at 23:16
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Here's a thought about ancient measurement systems.
Factors between units of 60, 60, 24, 7, 52 and 365 and a quarter, still in common use.
I think the French tried to decimalise some of that after the Revolution
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