Apparently because of evaporation in the casks when they were measured after the transatlantic crossing.
Imperial vs Metric
- Thread starter billw
- Start date
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I found an excercise book from about 1964 when I was ten - the sums were in pounds, shillings, pence and farthings (although they went out in 1960), liquid in gills, pints, quarts and gallons, volume in gallons, pecks and bushels and distance in miles, furlongs, chains, rods, yards, feet and inches. No room for decimal point error. I remember being sent to buy potatoes in gallons.
TheTiddles
Established Member
There is no human alive that ever used “imperial”, the inch has been defined by being a fraction of a metre since the reign of Victoria. So this inch thingy is just like putting a different badge on a car, it doesn’t make it different, but you do it if you like
Aidan
Aidan
Trevanion
Greatest Of All Time
An inch is still an inch, right?
After 1066, 1 inch was equal to 3 barleycorns, which continued to be its legal definition for several centuries ...
So a millimetre happens to be 0.03937007874 of an inch rather than an inch happening to be 25.4 mm.
So a millimetre happens to be 0.03937007874 of an inch rather than an inch happening to be 25.4 mm.
Cheshirechappie
Established Member
Ah - well - not strictly true, old chap. The inch was defined as being 25.4mm in 1930, not in Victoria's time. Also, the inch goes back way longer than millimetres, first appearing in an English document in the 7th century. It was derived from the Roman 1/12th of a foot, and in the 11th century was defined as the width of three barleycorns (that's 'cos they didn't have a vernier calliper in them days, so had to use something a bit handier as a standard).
Edit to add - Ha! You beat me to it, Phil!
More here - Inch - Wikipedia
TheTiddles
Established Member
1893 in the USA, and a measurement that’s not repeatable is not a measurement is it, hence the romans were not using inches, they just had a different unit called the same name.
Wikipedia is also incorrect on some of that page too, the UK was using metric extensively since the early 1800’s
Aidan
Wikipedia is also incorrect on some of that page too, the UK was using metric extensively since the early 1800’s
Aidan
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TheUnicorn
Established Member
metric just seems a lot more logical, especially for fine measurements, fractions of inches just get confusing, and confusion leads to error. I do hate it when large measurements are given in mm, like 2400mm boards, not using metres here is a complete nonsense
billw
The Tattooed One
More annoyingly I’ve just noticed my hammer is imperial, having an 8oz head, but all my panel pins are in mm so now I need a new hammer. Or some older nails.
Trainee neophyte
Established Member
I live in metric country, so I'm metric. However, Greeks do plumbing in inches, and a one inch pipe is 32mm diameter; half inch is 16mm . I haven't quite worked out why, but I'm working on it. I also know what an inch looks like, (second crease on my thumb), cubits are useful, but I pace in metres, not yards. Ask me how tall I am, and it's 6'3", but I weigh 95kg. Ask me what 6 inches looks like, and I can tell you, but 15cm? Not sure...It's all a bit of a mess
TheTiddles
Established Member
you could use metres, but it would be a 2.400m sheet, so the same number of characters
Aidan
Extensively? Not in my part of the UK 160 years after that. I didn't come across a single thing in metric until the mid '60s, and that was at school because they were obliged to teach it.
Metres are fine. Millimetres are fine. Centimetres are the work of the devil, invented to confuse us.
inch and half inch internal bore I would expect.
I had only ever known metric until I started working, but now working for an American engineering company I have a familiarity with inches I dont regularly work with measurements.
Up to a couple of feet I can work in either but I dislike fractional inches. I can picture things in feet up to about 10ft then I struggle.
From watching YouTube, I can relate better to metal machining where they are working in thou rather than fractions of a mm.
I have typed this message in 15 pt font, based on 72nds of an inch. imperial is more commonplace than I realised!
Either. So long as some clown doesn't decree it's 240cm.
TheTiddles
Established Member
I think you’ve missed the point.
By the 1960’s inches by definition were a number of millimetres. So you were using millimetres, you always have been, you’ve never used anything else, just a conversion of them because, well, because. Before that inches were a fraction of a yard, which was defined as... a fraction of a metre and before that... then inches were a thing, but that was before the 1890’s. Hence no living person has ever used the inch as a measurement standard.
Cm are not SI so I’m with you there. I used to regularly work in inches and metric, usually with amusement as there were still engineers who struggled despite them being the same.
aidan
About 25 years ago I went into the kitchen at work one day at about 10am. Yea!! He's here! What's up? I asked. This was long before the common use of computers (in that sort of environment, at least). How many fluid ounces are there in a litre? 35, I said ( I was a cellarman - I knew all sorts of conversions). Brilliant, we knew you'd be the only person here who knew. They'd seen a recipe in fluid ounces and had no idea what a fluid ounce was.
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And here, millimetres were in common usage a division of an inch. So it's all rather academic. We've all been using barleycorns, ells and fathoms - we just didn't know it.
Well it should not have been, The inch is defined as 25.4 mm exactly. There is no conversion error. It could of course have been rounding sums at the wrong point.
A late friend, a pharmacist, pointed out that imperial measuremnts served a purpose - there were no decimal point errors in prescribed drug measurements so many fewer accidental overdoses.
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I overheard somebody distributing an ounce from their car window when I walked the dog the other night, so this is still commonplace in Leeds!
