Uk 50 Years Of Decimal Currency

[annv]

Hi Cross ply tires on steel wheels are measured in inches radial tires on alloy wheels are measured in metric, wheel dia is still in inches probably as customers relate to 16" inches rather than 406mm. John

[CambridgeCabby]

Pubs changed from 1/6 Gill to 25 or 35ml both of which are larger measures , 1/6 Gill is approx 23.7ml so the new smaller measure was roughly 6% greater , most pubs increased their prices by 20% and quoted the new larger measures as the reason ; the optics changed their design to give the optical illusion of being considerably larger when in fact the plastic globe was just thicker .

I refused to change over to the new measures and despite the brewery and other official bodies getting involved the old licensing act was in place for a further 6 years before the old measures became illegal and as long as I displayed the signage that Gin, rum, vodka and whisk(e)y was served in 1/6 Gill measures I was complying with the law (all other spirits were not considered as spirits under the old licensing act).

Ciders , porters and ales were available in 1/3, 1/2 and pint sizes either bottled or by stamped glasses , shandy (lemonade or ginger beer) had to be charged at the price of the constituent beer , now the bottles are in ml and a bar may sell draught beer by ml provided the glasses are stamped and price list is visible at point of sale .

thank god most locals still sell beer by the pint !!

 

[webntweb]

4 hours ago, CambridgeCabby said:

I can never understand why it is  that a lot of people will state during the winter it is zero or -1 etc yet in the summer they’ll say it’s a scorcher today high 70’s without realising they are using two different scales

When I started drinking in the 60s it amused me that when asked what they'd like to drink, ladies would often answer I will have a gill please. They meant half a pint but a gill is actually a quarter of a pint.

[MauriceMynah]

I wonder how many of you dear readers refer to the strength of Gin, Rum etc. using the term "Percentage proof"

This is, of course, totally wrong and is mixing the metric with the imperial.

Standard whisky for example is 40% ABV or in the old days "70 degrees proof spirit". 

[JennyMorgan]

Can we please, please go back to 'proper' measurements!

[FairTmiddlin]

I remember that Swan Vestas went from 2d to 2p overnight almost.

 

[grendel]

JM wants his next boat to be measured in cubits - maybe if it keeps raining as it has been JM, maybe

[JennyMorgan]

17 minutes ago, FairTmiddlin said:

I remember that Swan Vestas went from 2d to 2p overnight almost.

 

Wasn't that called inflation?

[FairTmiddlin]

1 minute ago, JennyMorgan said:

Wasn't that called inflation?

More like conflagration

[SteveO]

I was trained as a scientist and so everything shorter than a foot I use metric for down as far as microns.  Everything above that, I think of in terms of miles, yards, feet and inches. Volumes likewise, anything smaller than a pint, I work in ml, anything above that and I think in pints and gallons. Weights, similarly. Having been brought up with the old units, I feel more comfortable working with them where possible.  For the small stuff that I spent half of my life working with, metric is king. As far as money is concerned, I could still manage with £,s,d if I had to.

[PaulN]

It has always baffled me why the Continent always measure their boats in feet. E.g. my previous boat was a French Beneteau 42, but all the manufacturers there are the same Germany Bavaria 38, Hanse 45; Italy Riva 88 etc

[Chelsea14Ian]

I've been drinking  with a few people  who try to buy a round with a ten bob note 

[Mouldy]

4 minutes ago, Chelsea14Ian said:

I've been drinking  with a few people  who try to buy a round with a ten bob note 

Fellow Chelsea supporters, I wonder?? 😉😉

[Chelsea14Ian]

No never Chelsea boys.

[HEM]

17 hours ago, PaulN said:

It has always baffled me why the Continent always measure their boats in feet.

They measure their bicycles & TV / computer screens in inches as well...

 

But the wingspan of my glider is in metres (actually thats a global thing).

[HEM]

On 16/02/2021 at 01:09, FairTmiddlin said:

Wonder does anyone still convert to "Old Money".

 

Your poor lot.  I had to go from Pounds/shillings/pence => pound/new pence => D-Mark => Euro!

[Paul]

On 16/02/2021 at 08:23, ranworthbreeze said:

As far as I am aware hardwood prices are still sold in square inches.

It was cubic inches, but sorry to tell you the wood yard I buy now quotes in cubic meters, I think that's fairly standard these days as the wholesale rate is in M³. If you actually saw some of the prices in M³ you'd be horrified. Of course you normally only buy a small fraction at a time.

I still find that far preferable to what many wood yards do and sell length prices in the same way as softwoods, suggesting that it is much easier for the modern customer to see the price they pay and that they don't understand the volume method, but inevitably this leads to much higher prices. 

As an example I've been looking for a piece of zebrano to edge a draughts board I'm making as a retirement gift for a friend. The yard I normally use has none in stock at present, and not likely to get any for several weeks, so I have sourced a piece elsewhere in the size I need, 120 x 25mm sawn (note mm now, not inches) at a cost of £24 per meter which equates to around £8000 per M³, well over double what I usually pay by volume for zebrano and nearly as much as I paid for the African black ebony for the 32 black squares, which is a far more expensive timber. 

[TheQ]

19 hours ago, PaulN said:

It has always baffled me why the Continent always measure their boats in feet. E.g. my previous boat was a French Beneteau 42, but all the manufacturers there are the same Germany Bavaria 38, Hanse 45; Italy Riva 88 etc

'Cos they hope to sell to rich Americans..

[PaulN]

Good point TQ, although when it comes to ocean going superyachts, they seem to quote metres. May be thats to sell to Rich Brits. I'm always amazed when I've been on holiday in the Med and looked around the Super Yacht Marinas and seen the number of Red Ensigns flying.

[BroadAmbition]

Its standard for wall / floor tiles to be discussed / ordered / sold by the square metre

All my estimates are issued in metric

I always work nowadays using the metric system as it is so simple.  I could even just for the novelty factor revert back to imperial but but for the life of me have no idea why I would do so

Griff

[grendel]

I can work with both measurement systems simultaneously, a great deal of the time doing the conversion in my head.

This came about due to the 10 years of my career drawing up new cable record drawings from the old sketches, we would send out the os 1:2500 map sheets to our head office, here each kilometer square would be cut into 6 sheets, and photographed on a special rig, this produced at the end of the day 6 large film sheets (about A0 size) scaled at 1:500, upon which we would hand ink the cable routes, the photographic image was on the back of the sheets, so any new buildings had to be added to the back, and a special solution was used to remove the photographic image from the back when needed.

So my job was to accurately plot all of the cables from the old records onto these new sheets, some of these old records dated back into the 1890's and were works of art almost, hand coloured in sketch books. we had everything from that to back of fag packet sketches to deal with. all of the pre decimalisation records were of course using the old imperial measurements, so for 10 years my job was literally to convert these to metric and plot them onto the drawing. the most common way to find the route was to plot the service joints (each seperately recorded on a work sheet) along a road and join them up (think dot to dot on a massive scale) and a process that hasnt really changed in all of the years i have been working, we still do the same process, except we are now doing it in CAD, the measurements provided are still as laughably innacurate as back then (I swear I can tell you how tall the person recording the measurements was, just by how inaccurate his pacing of the measurements is). the only accurate measures I have ever seen are the ones i have personally taken on site, with very few exceptions.

After my years drawing up the old cable records (I moved between 3 offices at this time, as we finished each area) I progressed up the ladder to site recorder, where every morning i would visit the sites in my patch - measure all the new cables that had been laid since my previous visit, then come back in the afternoon to add those new cables to the existing records.

[floydraser]

This not quite a thread drift, more of an expansion, but I'm just going through something of a similar thing with 3D printing.

Since early childhood I was allowed to mess around with bits of metal, wood and any tools I found in the garage. So if I need to repair/restore/make anything I automatically think in terms of metal (hit it with a big enough hammer and it'll do anything), wood (the work of Satan) and GRP (perfect material; does as it's told).

My birthday was at the beginning of January and son No.2 bought me a decent bottle of whisky. Due to lockdown we haven't been able to get together (just as well, they have had Covid) and he got fed up with seeing the whisky sitting there. He enjoyed the whisky and just yesterday a 3D printer came by courier. Happy birthday Dad.

It's not the technology that's confusing; it says "ideal for children", thanks. But trying to think of useful things to make with it, that I couldn't easily make by other means is hurting my brain. I watched a few Youtube vids last night and so far I get the impression that the trend is to print poor copies of war gaming figures. May appeal to retired Colonels then, Waterloo anyone?

I was only 14 in 1971 so the change was easy but I knew engineers who used to go nuts if they saw a drawing with both metric and imperial units.

[grendel]

that is not the only thing you can print, basically if you can draw it in 3d, then you can prin it, I printed some neat bearings that can only be assembled on a 3d printer as they contain herringbone gears, so the inner gears are printed at the same time as the outers, but once printed cannot be separated. they can also make that little plastic clip you broke thats essential for making xyz work, in fact i would say 99% of the stuff I print is stuff i have drawn up

[Paul]

3 hours ago, grendel said:

i would say 99% of the stuff I print is stuff i have drawn up

it's the drawing it that puts me off. About the only thing I can draw is breath. 

[PaulN]

I do think in metres and millimetres and not feet and inches, having been all my working life in the construction industry from 1969 which was the year the industry went metric.

It does annoy me though that schools seem to teach in metres and centimetres. The UK adopted a system of metres and millimetres when we went metric. No one in construction or engineering industries talks about centimetres.