Monday, July 30, 2018

Imperial measure or metric

In the mid 1970's both the U.S and Canada made a move to a metric system of measuring and away from the imperial system.  Imperial used feet, yards and miles as well as pints and gallons.  Metric uses meters, kilometers, milliliters and liters.  The U. S never made the move but Canada did...sort of!  As we traveled across Canada we found distances measured in kilometers and driving speed signs in kilometers per hour.  We expected that.  In fact we posted several conversion charts in Harvey.  But golf courses are still measured in yards.  If you stop at a brewery or restaurant the beer is measured in ounces or pints, not milliliters.  Canadian football fields are measured in yards.  When buying gasoline the fuel is measured by the liter.  When calling an RV park and asking for a reservation they want to know how long your RV is in feet.

It does seem that those folks of our generation are still using the imperial system.  The generation behind them seem to use imperial but can quickly move to metric.  While the younger generation seems to be totally metric and if you say something is 10 miles away they have no idea how far that is.  My guess is in another generation the imperial system will be forgotten...except for football golf and beer, eh!

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