Imperial units of measurement and the future?

Hello alltogether,

In the UK the older generation is still used to use the imperial measurement System (Pounds, Inches, feet, gallons, and on and on...) in daily life, but the younger generation haven't learned the old obsolete system in a way they could use it every day and from day to day the old System is more and more dissappearing. Modern industries only uses the SI units, which are officially used in the whole world and everyone understands what's they mean. Of course SI units are compulsory and important, but in the heritage point of view it can become critical. All the british steam locos were built to imperial units, but what will happen in the future, once the older generation with their knowledge will be greatly missed and the future volunteers don't know what psi is or they don't know how to calculate with inches and feet? Apart from rolling stock, the railway lines which date back to BR time are partially built to imperial standards. This will also cause many headaches for coming generations of volunteers.

What do you think needs to be done? Does the heritage railway try to teach the coming volunteering people in the sheds and workshops what an inch and feet is? How will the younger generation cope with this old and more difficult but still needed System?

Thank you for your comments!

 

It does not seem to present much of a problem to our apprentices on the Isle of Wight, they have all picked it up really quickly. All of our machines are imperial and we have metric and imperial measuring equipment.

 

Just don't assume anything. Make sure that your youngsters are clear on how many ounces there are in a pound.
A friend found two apprentices arguing about how many inches to a foot. One said 12, the other thought 16 (look at your tape rule, you'll see why)

 

I really don't think this is a major skill that is hard to pass on to be honest, in the grand scheme of things. Imperial units are easy, copper welding not so much...

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As (I believe) Einstein said, what is the point of committing details to memory when it is so easy to look them up when you need to?
I work in an industry (highways) where everything is designed in SI but the law requires traffic signs to show imperial measurements- which invariably have been measured in metric; converted to imperial; rounded off and displayed on a sign, the physical dimensions and text height of which are calculated in metric but determined by the speed limit (in imperial) of the road. Despite this it’s actually very easy to look up and follow the design rules, young trainees generally pick it up very quickly.

 

One time standard spacing for joists etc for those who don't know.

Sawdust.

 

Imperial measurements will survive in some form so long as America keeps using them.

Also, even now, ask any British child how tall they are and they will invariably reply in feet and inches. Because they are nice and convenient measurements.

Finally, I am reminded of my trip to Argentina in 2002. Argentina is a completely metric country. In a little town in the middle of nowhere we spotted a hardware store, outside which were samples of wood sizes on a board marked up with things like "4x2". The locals had no idea what the 4 and 2 were measured in, to them it was just a ratio, but the wood was still being sold in imperial sizes. No, this is not relevant at all, it just amuses me.


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Slightly off topic, my employer insists everything is metric. Including the vehicle height stickers in the company vans.
How very useful when there are a lot of low bridge signs in imperial only.
What could possibly go wrong?

 

I think everyone involved in heritage stuff knows imperial units and the general population in Britain generally do too. I can think in either metric or imperial. We still measure peoples height in feet and inches, their weight in stones, speed in mph etc. I am involved with wooden coach restoration and it was all made in imperial measurements so if the original wood was say 3" thick I set the saw or whatever to make it the same. Why try and convert it to metric when it was never metric in the first place. The only exceptions to this are sometimes availability of materials so for example plywood is all metric thicknesses so I might have to use 9mm ply instead of say 3/8" so you have to allow for the slight difference. Also screws and bolts etc tend to be available more easily in metric sizes like M10, M12 etc so if there is no reason to source imperial ones then I wouldn't do so. I am not so familiar with the old imperial Whitworth, UNC, UNF, BA bolts etc

Basically if I measure something and it is say exactly 10cm then I would use metric, If it is say exactly 4 inches then I use inches.

I believe I am correct in saying that once the whole of Europe used inches etc before the French introduced the Metric system. Wasn't an inch the length of a roman soldiers thumb and a feet the average size of their feet ?

 

As a modelmaker currently working in 4mm/ft scale, on the hoof conversion between the two are routine. With small nuts and bolts, you grab what's available and count your blessings! It's increasingly that way with sheet materials and extrusions too. When it comes to drawings, I really need to catch up with CAD!

 

..... for designing rockets

 

I've grown up 100% decimal but there was always, (and still is), a hangover from my parents generation so there was an understanding of feet and inches. In this respect, Aussies may be one generation ahead of the U.K. Feet and inches is still very common to use a way describing approximate measuresments - 6ft high, 4 inch pipe, 3 inch nail, missed it by a foot, etc. I suspect my children's generation will never use imperial for anything.

Imperial is almost never used to described weight unless you are talking about a cricket bat.

Water tanks are quite often still described by gallons, but not much else. Old guys talk about gallons/hour.

PSI is still very common, but mostly due to tyre pressures - I doubt many actually know that it means Pounds/square inch...it is just an arbitrary pressure rating. Interestingly, when I was plumbing, (braising copper is easy btw @flying scotsman123 ), it was all KPA but outside of that I always think of PSI. I only ever got my head around BAR in a limited way.

Miles only gets used now as slang - "...miles away...". Never as an acurate distance description, always Kilometres.

When I lived for a time in the UK and worked a few jobs in the building industry, I was quite surprised that almost everything seemed to be done in metric. Except for two older carpenters I occasionally crossed paths with for one building firm - they were a real treat to watch. All feet and inches and everything was done with hand tools and every tool was sharpened regularly. Real craftsmen they certainly were!

Strangely enough I have never had a problem with how much liquid there is in a pint......although, sometimes I may have overestimated how many pints will comfortably fit into the human body....

 

While restoring the NRM's Gresley TTO at Pickering, I had to replace the rotten one inch blockboard used for the partitions (you could still get 25mm blockboard then). I discovered that the supposedly 25mm thick sheets were in fact an inch thick (25.4mm) whilst the grooves machined into the teak body pillars (circa 1935) into which the partitions slot, were in fact only 25mm wide.

So the 1935 one inch blockboard was in fact metric and the 2001 25mm blockboard was Imperial!

Sawdust.

 

...... Aye. There's a story 'bout that! A well off topic one tho'.

 

I don't think there is an issue, but I would suggest for all small dimensions (less than than 200" say) dropping the use of feet. I had an issue with a drawing where 1' 4" looked like 14". The Yanks now often use inches and decimals so that 10' 2 3/8" is written as 122.38".

Rob

 

Now that is confusing!

 

surely material sizes are nominal anyway?

 

Killjoy!

In my experience, the real bugbear has always been "unit of measure". In my NHS supplies days, a family planning clinic in Brighton landed up with 17 roll cages of condoms due to some pillock not realising 250 refered to the contents of one box. Our ever vigilant warehouse staff failed to notice anything unusual about one location ordering a quantity equal to a fortnight's use across the entire SE Thames region! Half-cock amendments to the computerised ordering system at this time caused the same havoc with syringes and crepe bandages, but the condom issue was by far the funniest!

 

Last paragraph is correct and a yard is figure tip to shoulderblade and a furlong was the length of a furrow back in the day of strip farming. With area an acre was the maximum a horse and a single blade plough could achieve in a day. At least there is some history to imperial, what's a centimetre apart from being 10 millimetres?