North Oxford - Questions/Advice etc!

[Tracy D'arth]

20 minutes ago, mrsmelly said:

I was most impressed with one of my grandkids only the other day. I asked him how tall he was and he immediately replied six feet seven, without hesitation, as thats what he says whoever asks. It just goes to show that even today some unis at least have kids who know their stuff  It makes far more sense than two hunderd point seven centimetres anyway 

Not a bad size for a 5 year old either.  ? !  

[Athy]

6 hours ago, Lily Rose said:

 

Not here though, see table 1. Just been looking at this as we plan to head down to Oxford and onto the river soon.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/river-thames-boat-registration-charges/river-thames-boat-registration-and-other-charges-1-january-2022-to-31-december-2022

 

 

 

 

Yes, officialdom and red tape tend to use metric. 

[Ronaldo47]

There was a lot of metric madness around  in the early 1970's.

 

A friend working for the CEGB mentioned that the dimensions of the generating hall of his power station were now expressed in millimeters.

 

The metric version of an electronics catalogue had a metricated technical data section in which most of the original numbers had been multiplied by 25.4. This included  Pi, stated to have a value in the metric system of 79.97.

 

The metric  edition of a book on plumbing,  expressed pressures in so many  454 grams per 654.16 square millimeters, and described a cold water tank of approximately (!) 181.838 litres capacity.

 

Companies found that UK manufacturers were no longer supplying steel rod in the  inch dimensions they needed to maintain older equipment, and had to get it from companies in mainland Europe.

 

Plessey (for whom  I was working at the time) produced an amended  design of cabinet  for their radio equipment  that was widely used in airports, in which the original Unified (inch) fasteners were replaced by metric. Their european customers asked them to supply the original design: due to the universal use of American  Unified screw threads in the aviation industry, they only carried Inch-dimension fasteners and didn't want the hassle of having to buy and stock metric fasteners. 

 

Even today, the nominal sizes of the display screens used in TVs, computers, and motor vehicles are normally expressed as so many inches  (pouce, zoll, pulgada, and  pollice in France, Germany, Spain and Italy respectively).

Edited June 24, 2022 by Ronaldo47
typos

[David Mack]

I once worked with some archive drawings from London Underground, which, due to the poor condition of the paper originals, had been traced/redrawn before being committed to microfiche. In the process all the measurements had been converted to metric.

To avoid negative numbers, it was the practice on the Underground to give heights relative to a datum 100 feet below Ordnance Datum. So now the drawings had the levels of underground structures given in metres above a datum of -30.48 metres!

[LadyG]

On 23/06/2022 at 09:46, Athy said:

Yet, when I see an advert for a house for sale, the estate agent doesn't give the measurements of the rooms in millimetres. They use either feet and inches, metres and centimetres, or both. These are easier for prospective buyers to understand than millimetres would be.

Fortunately it's only estate agents that use feet and inches, they have a laser gadget so it's easy.

It is a good standard tbh, as house value is often in £ per sq ft, it would be tricky in sq m and incomprehensible in sq cm, cm are always going to fall foul of the decimal point.