Why is the metric system associated with the '70s?

[1995hoo]

Am I the only person who grew up calling the metric temperature scale "centigrade" instead of "Celsius?"

My father called it centigrade. The name makes sense when you think about what it means. I recall one of my early teachers, most likely my second-grade teacher, explaining that the two terms meant the same thing.

[kphoger]

I grew up hearing both terms.

[webny99]

Well, if you're walking home, you should know approximately how many minutes away you are, even if you don't know anything about the metric or imperial systems of measurement.

Nope.  I rarely walk farther than a few blocks anymore, so I don't have a good feel for how many minutes away different places are.

I don't usually walk far away from home either, and yet I'd still almost always be able to approximate how many minutes away I am from home, certainly for anywhere within 5 miles (I was originally going to say 10 miles, but I'll be conservative).

And we don't have a real grid around here, so this comes from just knowing the area. To be honest, I would feel like a bit of a failure if I couldn't give a reasonably close estimate of how far away from home I was at any given moment. Usually, I think of this in terms of the driving distance, but it would be no different if the context was such that I was on foot.

[Dirt Roads]

Am I the only person who grew up calling the metric temperature scale "centigrade" instead of "Celsius?"

Even in my career, I called it centigrade until I started working on a project in Frankfurt.  After my fourth or fifth overseas project, I was eventually weaned off of it.  Folks in Canada really didn't seem to mind, and often enjoyed the American flair to have the Imperial system with just a twinge of Metric.  I do remember a factory visit in Kingston, Ontario where this got pretty funny.  It was just at freezing when I arrived in Toronto and Lake Ontario only had a tad of ice chunks along the banks.  Two days later in Kingston, it got down to minus-20 and we had to shut down testing.  When somebody in the main office asked Fahrenheit or Metric, and I answered "Yes, Fahrenheit and Centigrade".  The Canadians thought it belonged on SCTV.  To which, I got distracted and had to talk about the episode from the night before.

[Dirt Roads]

Am I the only person who grew up calling the metric temperature scale "centigrade" instead of "Celsius?"

Even in my career, I called it centigrade until I started working on a project in Frankfurt.  After my fourth or fifth overseas project, I was eventually weaned off of it.  Folks in Canada really didn't seem to mind, and often enjoyed the American flair to have the Imperial system with just a twinge of Metric.  I do remember a factory visit in Kingston, Ontario where this got pretty funny.  It was just at freezing when I arrived in Toronto and Lake Ontario only had a tad of ice chunks along the banks.  Two days later in Kingston, it got down to minus-20 and we had to shut down testing.  When somebody in the main office asked Fahrenheit or Metric, and I answered "Yes, Fahrenheit and Centigrade".  The Canadians thought it belonged on SCTV.  To which, I got distracted and had to talk about the episode from the night before.

Oh, and at minus-20 for two straight days Lake Ontario froze solid and the big trucks were running for the Thousand Islands as fast as they could before the thaw.  Mindblowing.

[hotdogPi]

Am I the only person who grew up calling the metric temperature scale "centigrade" instead of "Celsius?"

Even in my career, I called it centigrade until I started working on a project in Frankfurt.  After my fourth or fifth overseas project, I was eventually weaned off of it.  Folks in Canada really didn't seem to mind, and often enjoyed the American flair to have the Imperial system with just a twinge of Metric.  I do remember a factory visit in Kingston, Ontario where this got pretty funny.  It was just at freezing when I arrived in Toronto and Lake Ontario only had a tad of ice chunks along the banks.  Two days later in Kingston, it got down to minus-20 and we had to shut down testing.  When somebody in the main office asked Fahrenheit or Metric, and I answered "Yes, Fahrenheit and Centigrade".  The Canadians thought it belonged on SCTV.  To which, I got distracted and had to talk about the episode from the night before.

At -20, it can't be both Fahrenheit and Centigrade, even if you allow a margin of error.

[kkt]

What does Canada still use Imperial or customary measures for?

I was in Quebec in July 2019. Picture frame sizes were still in inches.

There was an interesting review at some point about penetration of metric system in different countries. Interestingly enough, there are leftovers of traditional units pretty much everywhere. Sometimes obscured, like 1524 mm rail gauge, sometimes converted to metric, like 200 mg carat.

Thank you for the info about picture frames!

1524 mm is a broad gauge, broader than Russian even.  Perhaps a rapid transit system?

[kkt]

Am I the only person who grew up calling the metric temperature scale "centigrade" instead of "Celsius?"

It was explained to me that SI adopted the name Celsius because as a proper name it wouldn't be spelled differently from one language to another.  I suppose so, although grams and meters are spelled almost the same everywhere.

[hotdogPi]

I suppose so, although grams and meters are spelled almost the same everywhere.

They're metres in most countries.

[SkyPesos]

1524 mm is a broad gauge, broader than Russian even.  Perhaps a rapid transit system?

I though 1524 mm (5 ft) is Russian gauge. I haven't been on a 1524 mm gauge railway before (many metro systems in former Soviet territory uses that), but Toronto uses 1495 mm (4 ft 10.875 in) on their subway, which is also broader than standard.

[kalvado]

1524 mm is a broad gauge, broader than Russian even.  Perhaps a rapid transit system?

I though 1524 mm (5 ft) is Russian gauge. I haven't been on a 1524 mm gauge railway before (many metro systems in former Soviet territory uses that), but Toronto uses 1495 mm (4 ft 10.875 in) on their subway, which is also broader than standard.

1524 was soviet standard, brute forced to 1520 metrication without full hardware overhaul and getting troubles as a result. Just for the sake of getting a more round metric number.

[kkt]

1524 mm is a broad gauge, broader than Russian even.  Perhaps a rapid transit system?

I though 1524 mm (5 ft) is Russian gauge. I haven't been on a 1524 mm gauge railway before (many metro systems in former Soviet territory uses that), but Toronto uses 1495 mm (4 ft 10.875 in) on their subway, which is also broader than standard.

Looking into it more, I see 1524 mm (exactly 5 feet) was the nominal standard Russia adopted in the mid 1800s.  However, the USSR adopted 1520 mm as the official standard and tightened the tolerance in the late 1960s.  A small change and most running stock could be used without modification.

[kalvado]

1524 mm is a broad gauge, broader than Russian even.  Perhaps a rapid transit system?

I though 1524 mm (5 ft) is Russian gauge. I haven't been on a 1524 mm gauge railway before (many metro systems in former Soviet territory uses that), but Toronto uses 1495 mm (4 ft 10.875 in) on their subway, which is also broader than standard.

Looking into it more, I see 1524 mm (exactly 5 feet) was the nominal standard Russia adopted in the mid 1800s.  However, the USSR adopted 1520 mm as the official standard and tightened the tolerance in the late 1960s.  A small change and most running stock could be used without modification.

From what I heard it was NOT without problems...

[vdeane]

Driving in Europe, it was easy to figure your ETA. Instead of figuring one minute per mile at 60 mph, you estimated one minute per 2 KM at 120 kph and just go from there.

120 to 130 kph was typical Autobahn speed at the time ... 130 kph = about 80 mph which was plenty fast. But if you didn't want to ride with the big dogs, you kept your ass in the right lane.

Too bad Canada doesn't have 120 limits outside of some freeways in British Columbia.  Heck, Québec and most of Ontario are stuck at 100!

What does Canada still use Imperial or customary measures for?

Lots of little things.  Basically, in 1985 the government decided to halt further forced metric conversion (and the tradespeople were revolting over metric before then anyways; this was actually an election issue).  Construction is a big one.  Cooking is another.  Stores advertise meat and produce per pound (even if the package is labeled per kilogram), and products tend to be sized in US customary, just labeled in metric (so a bottle might be the seemingly random size of 355 ml, which is 12 fluid ounces).  The freight railroads also still use imperial.  Wikipedia goes into detail.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Canada#Products_and_retail

The notion kphoger mentions of knowing the distance based on a "mile-grid system" is utterly alien to me because we have no grid system of that sort here. To be clear, I'm not saying that as criticism of kphoger; rather, it's more an observation on how where you live can clearly influence your opinions on this sort of issue in ways that may not even remotely occur to someone living elsewhere.

I've read that some Canadians use miles for short distances and km for long distances (despite the relative size of the two units) because of that grid system.

Am I the only person who grew up calling the metric temperature scale "centigrade" instead of "Celsius?"

Even in my career, I called it centigrade until I started working on a project in Frankfurt.  After my fourth or fifth overseas project, I was eventually weaned off of it.  Folks in Canada really didn't seem to mind, and often enjoyed the American flair to have the Imperial system with just a twinge of Metric.  I do remember a factory visit in Kingston, Ontario where this got pretty funny.  It was just at freezing when I arrived in Toronto and Lake Ontario only had a tad of ice chunks along the banks.  Two days later in Kingston, it got down to minus-20 and we had to shut down testing.  When somebody in the main office asked Fahrenheit or Metric, and I answered "Yes, Fahrenheit and Centigrade".  The Canadians thought it belonged on SCTV.  To which, I got distracted and had to talk about the episode from the night before.

Oh, and at minus-20 for two straight days Lake Ontario froze solid and the big trucks were running for the Thousand Islands as fast as they could before the thaw.  Mindblowing.

They let trucks on Lake Ontario even though it was only that cold for a couple days!?

[J N Winkler]

Just a few observations:

*  The 1970's metric push involved all of the English-speaking settler nations--not just the US, but also Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, the last three of which carried conversion more or less to completion.

*  When section-line roads, mile-spaced arterials, etc. are quoted as a reason not to convert to metric, the argument is implicitly about the US Public Land Survey System.  Lands surveyed to the PLSS have extent in all US states with the exceptions of the original thirteen colonies plus Vermont, Maine, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Texas.  However, these states with no PLSS coverage have populations aggregating to 140.4 million, or 42% of the population of the fifty US states.  It is often argued that Canada made the conversion successfully despite having large areas surveyed on a mile-based system, but it has long been my sense (albeit as a casual visitor) that the range/concession system is nowhere near as entrenched historically and culturally there as sections, townships, and ranges are here (they are, for example, tied to railroad building, school founding, and allotment of Indian lands--much more than just road layout and urban design, or dialect features like "back forty," "lower forty," etc. for various quarters of a quarter section).

*  In terms of traffic signing, the US metric push stalled after I-19 was signed in metric (ultimately only for guide signs, not warning and regulatory signs as originally provided for in the plans) and a number of states introduced various types of dual-unit signing (in California, the sign spec sheets for these remained valid into the early noughties).  In the UK a similar push was considered with regard to traffic signs, but ultimately was progressed only as a change to "maximum authorised mass" (expressed as tonnes, i.e., metric tons, and as "T" on signs) as the basis for weight restrictions, weak bridge signs, etc. provided for in TSRGD 1981.  Earlier (but still post-Worboys) signs referenced "tons" (in a small-caps treatment).

I've often wondered if there is a good book-length account of the 1970's metric push that looks at how it unfolded from an international perspective.

[bandit957]

I've often wondered if there is a good book-length account of the 1970's metric push that looks at how it unfolded from an international perspective.

There is a book titled 'What Ever Happened To The Metric System?' that talks about the metric system.

[kphoger]

*  When section-line roads, mile-spaced arterials, etc. are quoted as a reason not to convert to metric, the argument is implicitly about the US Public Land Survey System.  Lands surveyed to the PLSS have extent in all US states with the exceptions of the original thirteen colonies plus Vermont, Maine, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Texas.

I was thinking more about this last night.

I use the mile grid not just in town, but out in the country as well.  For reasons both personal and professional, I sometimes find myself driving in rural Butler County.  The east-west roads there are numbered, the numbers increasing by 10 every mile.  If I'm running a delivery with my wife, and we need to turn on NW 50th St, and we just passed SW 10th St, then I know my turn is six miles away.  I look down at the trip odometer and see that it's at, say, 107.4;  when it gets to 113 on the odometer, I slow down and start looking for REA lines crossing the road to know where my turn is.

Back when I was growing up in Rawlins County, the rural roads had no street signs.  That's because they didn't even have names then.  They weren't numbered/lettered for 9-1-1 purposes until after I moved away in 1999.  We moved there in 1990, when my dad was called as pastor of a church in town and a church out in the country.  There were a lot of farmers in both congregations.  The previous pastor had made a database of where each member family lived, for the purpose of visitation.  But the actual address would have been worthless (how do you drive to "Rural Route 4, Box 25" when RR4 refers to a mail delivery route and not a road name?)  Instead, the database contained entries like 7E4S1W2S.  That meant, to get to that farmhouse, you drive 7 miles east of town, then 4 miles south, then 1 mile west, then 2 miles south.  Doing so was really easy, because there would be a crossroad at almost every mile-point.  So, after turning south from the highway, you'd just count four crossroads and turn right, then turn left at the next crossroad, then look around for the farmhouse at the second crossroad after that.

(they are, for example, tied to railroad building, school founding, and allotment of Indian lands--much more than just road layout and urban design, or dialect features like "back forty," "lower forty," etc. for various quarters of a quarter section)

When I originally mentioned phrases like 'the lower forty' or 'the north half', it was to show that some things would naturally never change–even if we were to adopt the metric system.  The lower forty would still be 40 acres to anyone involved:  it wouldn't be 16.1874 hectares.  The north half would still be a half-section to anyone involved:  it wouldn't be 1.29499 km².

[TXtoNJ]

When I originally mentioned phrases like 'the lower forty' or 'the north half', it was to show that some things would naturally never change–even if we were to adopt the metric system.  The lower forty would still be 40 acres to anyone involved:  it wouldn't be 16.1874 hectares.  The north half would still be a half-section to anyone involved:  it wouldn't be 1.29499 km².

Not to mention converting acres to hectares for official documents is easily accessible to anyone with a smartphone.

[kphoger]

When I originally mentioned phrases like 'the lower forty' or 'the north half', it was to show that some things would naturally never change–even if we were to adopt the metric system.  The lower forty would still be 40 acres to anyone involved:  it wouldn't be 16.1874 hectares.  The north half would still be a half-section to anyone involved:  it wouldn't be 1.29499 km².

Not to mention converting acres to hectares for official documents is easily accessible to anyone with a smartphone.

Yeah, but my point is that everyone and their uncle would still say things like "What are you growing this year on the northwest quarter?" or "Remember when Dad got bit by that rattler out on the lower forty?" or "We're considering selling a half-section when Dean goes off to college."

[hotdogPi]

When I originally mentioned phrases like 'the lower forty' or 'the north half', it was to show that some things would naturally never change–even if we were to adopt the metric system.  The lower forty would still be 40 acres to anyone involved:  it wouldn't be 16.1874 hectares.  The north half would still be a half-section to anyone involved:  it wouldn't be 1.29499 km².

Not to mention converting acres to hectares for official documents is easily accessible to anyone with a smartphone.

Yeah, but my point is that everyone and their uncle would still say things like "What are you growing this year on the northwest quarter?" or "Remember when Dad got bit by that rattler out on the lower forty?" or "We're considering selling a half-section when Dean goes off to college."

"Below zero" only means below freezing in Canada. It didn't retain the older meaning of below 0°F.

[Scott5114]

When I originally mentioned phrases like 'the lower forty' or 'the north half', it was to show that some things would naturally never change–even if we were to adopt the metric system.  The lower forty would still be 40 acres to anyone involved:  it wouldn't be 16.1874 hectares.  The north half would still be a half-section to anyone involved:  it wouldn't be 1.29499 km².

Not to mention converting acres to hectares for official documents is easily accessible to anyone with a smartphone.

Yeah, but my point is that everyone and their uncle would still say things like "What are you growing this year on the northwest quarter?" or "Remember when Dad got bit by that rattler out on the lower forty?" or "We're considering selling a half-section when Dean goes off to college."

And the number of people that these sorts of phrases would be relevant to are comparatively low. I grew up in rural McClain County OK and, at least in the part I was in, it was pretty uncommon for anyone to have as much as 40 acres. We lived on a 1 acre lot; most lots seemed to be 5 to 10 acres.

My current workplace is on a 45-acre lot, and that feels like oceans of space; more than enough for our greenhouse and a herd of cattle to coexist on, and being that the cattle are not my problem (unless they decide they want to be), there are parts of the lot I would never have any reason to visit.

[bing101]

Metric at least in the USA is confined to science, mathematics and engineering fields. 

Which of those are soft drinks?

The fizzy lifting drinks are still in development.

Medicine has also mostly switched over to metric, though some over-the-counter liquid products still use tablespoons.

Yes and peer review journals in biology tends to have data written in metric for data when papers have to get attention in publications in multiple countries. 

[MCRoads]

Didn't see it mentioned here, but the first few pages make it clear that Metric units will no longer be allowed in the Manual.

Absolutely ridiculous

Are you being facetious?

Nope. We're 50 years overdue on metrication. We're continuing to dig in our heels for frankly stupid reasons.

I'm sure if somehow the country reverses (again) and goes back to Metrication, FHWA will be able to put metric specs back into the MUTCD a lot faster than it will take the states to invest in and replace their signage (again)

To be fair, I know of at least 1 other country that has switched over to metric, but a hell of a lot of their signage is still in imperial... see: UK

In fact, the UK and US started to transition to metric at around the same time, however, the US just didn’t go through with it. Which is annoying. Everyone says it will be expensive, because we need to replace all our infrastructure... no, not really. If we had went through with going to metric, nothing would really need to have changed right away. We would just need to make sure no NEW signs are imperial. Probably having new signs say “SPEED LIMIT XX KPH” with a sign below it saying “APPX XX MPH”. Maybe I’ll draw a concept in Inkscape. And for distances, we can do something similar, such as “1 KM — 1/2 MILE.

But, alas, nothing happened, to the annoyance of me, as the metric system wasn’t invented by an English guy on opium. Seriously, 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, and however tf many feet in a mile (5820?) WTF!

EDIT to add: 5,280 ft in a mile, 1,760 yards in a mile. Also, fl ozs, cups, pints, quarts, and gallons are the bane of my existence. 8 Fl oz in a cup, 2 cups in a pint, 2 pints in a quart, (makes sense so far, I guess...) and 4 quarts in a gallon. (There goes that last thing about making sense...)

[hotdogPi]

and however tf many feet in a mile (5820?) WTF!

It's 5280. I've never understood why they stuck an 11 in there. At least the pound sterling was 240 old pence, which is 2*2*2*2*3*5, and it can be easily subdivided into pretty much anything.

If it was 5820, that would be even weirder; one of its prime factors is 97.

[fwydriver405]

And for distances, we can do something similar, such as “1 KM — 1/2 MILE.

I think Maine and New Hampshire did something similar to that when signs were replaced around the 1990's-2000's. Is this a similar concept, but for your concept, the km would be first following the miles in parenthesis?

EDIT: I forgot some signs on I-265 in Jefferson County KY have it very similar to the Maine and New Hampshire examples but flipped.