LACORS (the Local Authority Co-ordinators of Regulatory Services) has confirmed its earlier advice that, where office floorspace is let per unit of floorspace, that unit must be metric. In doing so, it implicitly says that previous Government advice on this matter is wrong and/or misleading.
A reader has returned from an extensive tour of the USA, and has provided Metric Views with a personal view on their version of two-system systems of weights and measures. (Article contributed by Tony Wilson)
The Department for Transport (DfT) continues to ignore the clear advantages of the adoption of the international norms for road signage, namely the use of metric units, while potentially preventable accidents occur on our roads.
I recently had the pleasure of visiting the splendid (Chinese) First Emperor exhibition at the British Museum. Apart from the terracotta warriors, what impressed me the most was the way that Qin Shihuangdi imposed standardisation on his vast empire - including, of course, weights and measures.
This weekend thousands of runners will test themselves to the full in the annual Flora London Marathon. At 42.195 km, it is a race of endurance. But why 42.195 km? That is tied up in the history of the 1908 London Olympic Games. But why does the United Kingdom press call it a 26 mile 385 yard race and does it matter? For the record, two measurements differ by 1 cm. (Article contributed by Martin Vlietstra)
But seriously folks. The article below was an April fool joke but the decimal tape measure is real. In Britain surveyors did use the decimalised foot before going metric. Clearly they recognised the advantages of a decimal system but realised that the metric system proper had much more to offer. The tape featured in the article is in fact American where they still use old fashioned units of measurement. They too clearly see the advantages of decimal in measurement, so the next step is …