Many things divide British people from their continental neighbours. First, obviously, is the English Channel. Then, as we all know, Brits drive on the other side of the road. They also measure things differently, from beer to weight to distance. Britain uses a confusing mix of the continental metric system and the imperial system, which is a system of measurement with units such as the inch, the pint and the mile. The origin of some of these units goes back two thousand years, but they were only regulated in an Act of Parliament in 1824.
Foreign Sources
Most of these unit names arrived in Britain many years ago with invaders from the continent, specifically from Italy, France and Germany. The pound weight, the pint, the foot and the mile came with the Romans. Some units were based on body parts. Not surprisingly, values varied over time, although English Kings tried to establish rules. In the 14th century, an inch was defined as the length of three barleycorns. Two hundred years later, the rod (which is 5.5 yards) was the length of the left feet of sixteen men lined up heel to toe as they emerged from church!
Clarifying Act
The Weights and Measures Act of 1824, and another Act in 1878, established the British imperial system on the basis of precise definitions of selected existing units. The new gallon was defined as equal in volume to “ten pounds of distilled water weighed at 62°F with the barometer at thirty inches.” While the British were reforming weights and measures, the Americans were adopting units discarded by the 1824 Act!
Going Metric … Slowly
Believe it or not, the idea of adopting the continental metric system was actually considered in the British Parliament in 1818. Then came the first steps in that adoption … a hundred and fifty years later. In 1969, the Government created the Metric Board to promote the ‘new’ system. In 1978, the Government tried to make it mandatory in some sectors of the economy, but without success. All school examination boards began to require knowledge of the metric system. In the last thirty years, the EU has also tried to convert Brits to the beauty of the system —but with no joy!
A Metric confusion
Today only three countries —the US, Liberia and Myanmar— still (mostly or officially) stick to the imperial system. The situation now in the UK is a confusing mess of two systems operating at the same time. This makes it impossible to standardize medicine or technology, for example. The metric system is used for short distances and cooking, while people measure long distances in miles. Brits drink pints of beer. Most of government, industry and commerce use metric measures, but more than 50 per cent of young people do not know their weight in kilos or their height in centimetres. However, with Brexit increasing nationalism and isolation from Europe, perhaps that figure is set to only get bigger.
