What’s with this tape

[Garden Shed Projects]

Just picked this old tape up from my Dads place and used it to take some measurements of their stairs. I took the measurements in metric and only whenI got to the storey height did I realise something was amiss.

Why is zero on the metric scale 300mm from the end and not on the imperial? Is it some imperialistic joke to discredit this new fangled scale of measurement?

 

[MikeK]

I've only seen this on engineer's tape measures. It's called a zero offset or "dead foot" and is used when you can't, or don't want to, put the ring at the starting point. Instead, you drive a stake or nail in the surface beyond the starting point with the "zero" on the tape aligned at the starting point.

 

[Garden Shed Projects]

It is an engineers tape but why only on the metric scale?

 

[MikeK]

It is an engineers tape but why only on the metric scale?

I don't know. I've only seen this type of tape a couple of times and it was metric on one side and imperial, in tenths of inches, on the other side. Both sides had the zero offset.