ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades Freakin' cold!

How many cubic inches in a pint? Who gives a flying monkeys ****! The Imperial system worked fine because it was user friendly for ordinary folks. 'Mrs Cutout' is not a Nobel Prize scientist & has absolutely no interest whatsoever in the exact length of the Orinoco in nanometers. Temperature in degrees Kelvin? OOhh! we'll all be boiled alive in our beds!!!

Alan

See. You don't know, do you?

Yes -- We're supposed to have less than half the national average rainfall here, and with a weakly developed summer maximum


Ah, summer '76. Tall ice-cream sodas every day after school. camping in the tent in the back garden every night, and seeing standpipes set up on streetcorners on the news.


It's a mixture. New homes are going straight on to meters, but older properties are still on flat rate (myself included). In this area at least, you can switch to metered service but have the option of reverting to unmetered within the first year if you wish.

After a year, or when a property changes ownership, the meter has to stay though. The rates for my area are here:
http://www.anglianwater.co.uk/index.php?sectionid=35&parentid=14



Our decaying state education system may have switched to teaching only metric in the 1970s, but Brits of our generation still learned Imperial measurements from friends and family, private schools, etc. (I was born 1966).

Go up to a hundred people in the typical British town and ask how much they weigh or how tall they are. How many do you think will answer in kilograms and meters?

I'd say that the rebellion now is not so much about which system is better, or easier, but more with the way the government is dictating what people use and trying to impose draconian penalties on those who refuse to comply.

Unless something is done to change the proposed law, after 2010 it will become illegal to even display an Imperial equivalent alongside the metric on packaging and signs.


1 Imp. pt. = 34.68 cu. in.

1 U.S. pt = 28.88 cu. in. (wet), 33.6 cu. in. (dry).


As Alan pointed out though, how often does one need to make such a conversion in everyday usage? Pints to gallons and pints to fluid ounces covers most everyday conversions, and they're easy. Same with inches, feet, and yards, or pounds and ounces. The Imperial and U.S. Customary systems grew up around units which represented everyday quantities, and that's why they're liked.

Even metric France still retains the pousse and the livre, albeit that the latter is not the same as an English pound.

Oh yes, the format way is nothing new. Have a look here for some notes on those earlier short-lived formats:
www.8trackheaven.com

I still have several boxes full of 8-track cartridges, and an 8-track recorder.

Just as has been mentioned about earlier VCRs, that unit was built like a tank compared to today's junk: Solid metal chassis, big AC synchronous motor on the deck, controls and jacks fitted properly to the chassis instead of being supported only by soldered joints.


I'm working purely from memory as well, but I think VHS was introduced into the U.K. around 1977 or 1978.


Because it was the second year in a row that Luxembourg had won.

Eurovision, 1956 - 1969

Eurovision, 1970 - 1985


P.S. Is it just me, or did Anne-Marie David look rather like Marie Osmond?



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 10-05-2005).]

We Imperialites can console ourselves with those measures the Bureaucrats can't metricate:
Yonks.
Yups, (an old Forest of Dean word meaning lots).
Years, months weeks and days, etc.
A splosh.
A thinny. [ refers to a hand-rolled cigarette]
Brimfull.
Drips, drizzles and splashes.
A good soaking.
A Larrup.
Taller than me.
A Shortarse.
And a Welsh measure I never fathomed out, "Over by there", which is said in a lilting tone with no hand, head or body movement to indicate either distance or direction. All Welshmen understand this, no foreigner ever gets it.
And my favorite; The British Standard Handfull.

Alan




[This message has been edited by Alan Belson (edited 10-05-2005).]

Hi Ragnar,
Well,
The weather down here at the moment is a real lottery.
It's supposed to be spring, but I'm not too sure, we had snow here about 2 weeks ago and since then we've sort of had alternate hot and cold days.
Paul,
Man, if you did that here during the summer, you'd just about be run out of town.
Water becomes a very rare commodity here during hot weather.

I had two Siemens (Grundig license) machines in a row and both died rather quickly (though the second one probably had the head fried by a bad tape) and never came up to my expectations. Now I have an Ingelen 20VR22 (Philips VR 2022 license, Austrian made) and it's built like a tank! The picture was much smoother right from the beginning.
I also have a Sony three-format (NTSC, PAL, SECAM) Betamax machine, probably with mechanical failure. Switching it on just results in a high-pitched howl of a motor starting up and idling without any load.

You forgot to add the British Standard smidgen, and the British Standard dollop.


I think you may have misunderstood Mike. I'm not talking about opening up hydrants to play in the water or anything like that.

Some areas of the country had such low water reserves that summer that water supplies to houses were cut off and the standpipes were installed to limit the amount of water people could use to that which they could carry home in containers. In some cases they even had to use tankers to truck water into the area.

The reservoirs had already started out low due to a dry summer in 1975, and the long hot summer in '76 just about finished them off.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/1/newsid_2492000/2492981.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1998/water_week/66193.stm

By the way, I think somebody made a typo in that second link. See if you can spot it!

Oh yes, it was quite warm and sunny here this afternoon. Temperature made it up as far as 523 Rankin.

Ah, but the British Standard Handfull was unique, because you could only measure one thing with it.

Heres a clue; Jugs.

{Pardon Alan??}

Sorry Mike! (said with a little titter.)

[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 10-06-2005).]

[This message has been edited by Alan Belson (edited 10-09-2005).]