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Measurements

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V70PDB

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I worked for Bryants in the 70's. They were constructing parts of Chelmsley Woods at the time. And on Area 13a they constructed a block of houses which were Metric - the rest being imperial. The first in the UK we who worked on the block were told.
There was much pomp and ceremony. Chris Bryant came out to the site with people from the City Architects department, including Mr Maudsley and Aldm Beaumont-Darke buried a folding 6ft imperial measuring staff in the raft foundation of the block before any superstructure was buit.
I was the Site Engineer responsible for setting out the block (placing the block on the ground from the architects plans) and getting all of the foundation work in. It was my responsibility to get it set out to metric measurements.
I took pictures on the day so sadly I am not in any but I have pictures of the men involved in the construction and pictures of the day they buried the staff.
You can see them here on my blog here...

https://bartonsbirmingham.blogspot.com

Any comments would be welcome.
Peter Barton
 
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There are lots of measurements that are now pretty much out of use such as ounces (oz) for sweets and hundredweights (cwt). I think coal used to be delivered in hundredweights, although could be wrong about that. I remember learning about these weights at school and I think the conversions of the weights were printed on the back of Woolworth's red exercise books.

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I still work in pounds (lbs) and ounces (oz) and inches and yards. I only go over to metric when absolutely forced to. I always thought ' stones' was a funny measurement too. And how odd that the abbreviations of the old measurements never really matched up to the full description. No wonder we spent a lot of time in maths lessons trying to get the hang of it all.

Viv.
 
Vivienne14 said:
There are lots of measurements that are now pretty much out of use such as ounces (oz) for sweets and hundredweights (cwt). I think coal used to be delivered in hundredweights, although could be wrong about that. I remember learning about these weights at school and I think the conversions of the weights were printed on the back of Woolworth's red exercise books.

View attachment 96912. View attachment 96913


I still work in pounds (lbs) and ounces (oz) and inches and yards. I only go over to metric when absolutely forced to. I always thought ' stones' was a funny measurement too. And how odd that the abbreviations of the old measurements never really matched up to the full description. No wonder we spent a lot of time in maths lessons trying to get the hang of it all.

Viv.
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I remember the red exercise books too. On the back each weight had its own compartment. Good quality paper too, embossed in some way to give the red colour some kind of high-class touch.
 
Hi Richie. A picture (unfortunately not from a Woolworth's exercise book) showing the sort of tables. Filled with horror just by looking at it! Viv.


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Yes coal was in hundredweights. I think it was a convenient weight that would go in a standard sack and could be carried easily by the coalman
 
I was schooled in Imperial Units and Old Money so could cope with long division of pounds shillings and pence and was quite happy knowing my weight in stones and pounds, and my height in feet and inches.

In the 1970s the engineering company I worked for decided that we had to go metric within a timescale of two years. The change went surprisingly smoothly and we were soon working in millimetres and grams. The millimetres were a bit difficult at the start but the grams were much easier than the pounds and ounces we had used, and being engineers we still thought in 'thous' and had our unofficial units 'tads' and 'gnats'. I soon realised however that above a metre length I was still thinking in imperial units as I found out when I tried to use 'metric' for some DIY and my wallpaper lengths went 'haywire'.

I drive my car looking at my 'miles-per-gallon' and speed in 'miles-per-hour' but my concept of litres is not good so I fill my tank measuring the fuel in £'s and my sat-nav tells me 'it is so many yards to the next turn'. I still don't like 'bars' for tyre pressure so still use 'pounds-per-square-inch'.

Last year I altered my bathroom scales to give my weight in kilograms having used stones and pounds all my life and now have my room thermostat set to celsius but still get a nostalgic feeling when I look at an american weather forecasts and see temperatures in fahrenheit and in the old days if we saw 90 degrees we knew the day was going to be a 'scorcher' as some newspaper headlines put it.

But it's funny how we still measure the size of our telly screens in inches - well I do !
 
Not only coal that was in large heavy quantities. Potatoes were in 1cwt. paper bags and many may remember the potato displays - known to the initiated as 'spud boards' - in greengrocers stores. And in the high class type of greengrocers the fronts had individually placed potatoes to create an interesting display. In former times women bought more potatoes than they do today.

Often oranges and other fruits were also nicely displayed - not just dumped.

We still use scales with the type of weights (avoirdupois) shown in Post 1 in our kitchen.
 
Mike
"a convenient weight...........carried easily by the coalman" With the Health & Safety regs nowdays I think the limit now is 25kg or 55lbs in old money!
John
 
Thanks all, lots of memories there. Oh yes, forgotten about the pyramids of fruit and veg in shops. The cynic in me thinks the oldest produce would be at the top!

Interesting write up from Oldmohawk, just shows you how much metrication has come into our lives. Also remember you could ask for a quarter, half or three quarters of a pound for foods, sweets, materials etc.

I still got a dozen roses this year for Mother's Day. Again the cynic pops up and thinks 'we'll keep that one' you can't give ten red roses on Valentine's Day now can you? That's the most profitable day of the year for flower sales. And of course we still have the dozen or half dozen of eggs.

After all that mental arithmetic, mine's a 0.568 litre of mild landlord please! There's one that's escaped conversion. Well at least I think so, I've never checked if it's a pint measure or the metric equivalent. Viv.
 
I never quite understood the larger measurements of distance. No problem with Yards or Miles but all of those odd ones in between that no-one much seemed to use. I suppose Furlongs would have been easy but no-one seemed to care outside of horse racing. I don't know of anyone that actually used the "Rod, Pole or Perch" as it seemed to turn up everywhere and seeing as how it was such an odd number (5 1/2 yards), I'd suspect it was one of those that was left over from somewhere that didn't use yards or feet as a measure. I seem to remember there were a bunch of other measurements in there between Pole and Furlong but can't remember what they were.
The Americans still use Imperial measure so a lot of the stuff we see from them still has the old lengths on.
Some time back while I was doing a show for an internet radio station I found this tune for free download on the internet. It doesn't stream so the link is just a download and play thing. I suppose that's the usual U.S.attitude but the singer is definitely having fun with it.
 
The thing about numbers themselves is different from measure. People assume that everything is counted in decimal and that's all there is to it. The language (not just English - it happens in French and German) shows bits that used to work in dozens or scores as well. It's only when we get past 20 that numbers get to a standard form. .... and, of course, there are computers that count in binary or hexadecimal. O.K you don't see it most of the time but if you want to choose colours in a lot of programs you're going to see a hexadecimal value between 000000 (black) and FFFFFF (white). I'm drifting off again.
 
John M Weoley Castle said:
Easily??? Ever tried carrying hundredweight on your back?
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When I was 15/16 and working at the co-op on Moseley Rd, I was expected to carry most things that were delivered weekly. A sack of rice was 1cwt (hundredweight), a Cheddar cheese was 80 lbs, for example. A concession was made for my age, when it came to the
2 cwt sacks of sugar though, they would be dropped onto my back from the truck.
I got quite strong after a while, it stood me in good stead for when I joined the Army.
 
Some years ago I went to my local timber merchant and asked for a length of 3x2 (inches!). I was abruptly informed that 'we now measure in mm and I should have asked for 75x50'. I then asked how long their standard lengths were and the reply..................9 ft!!!!
 
I think I was 19 or 20 when we went metric in the UK (well, we've never gone totally metric have we?!) so I've been familiar with both.

I understand it ok but, as far as measurements are concerned, I have no mental visual reference of metric. If you say something is 4" I know what that looks like but I've no idea what it would be if you said it in centimetres. I'm only ok with a metre as I know it's 39" so just over a yard.
 
When I started my engineering apprenticeship we used the cgs (centimetre gram second) system then having got to grips with that they changed to MKS (metre, kilogram second) system. Then came SI units! What was wrong with c/s (cycles per second) for frequency - at least it meant something which Hertz doesn't. And as we changed cars, every few years the nut/bolt sizes changed; I still have sets of Whitworth, AF and Metric spanners.
 
I find metric problems with nuts and bolts.

Today, almost everything is a metric thread, the old imperial type Whitworth's thread etcetera, is now obsolete.

Until recently, I would undertake drum repairs, and drum hardware. All the modern stuff from Asia is now metric, but the old British & American hardware imperial thread is now getting difficult to find, and to replace.

I suspect those that refurbish old cars have the same problems.

Eddie
 
I can remember ordering a "cube" of timber but never knew what it really was. Then there is the "dwt" pennyweight and Troy ounce used in the precious metals dealerships. All very confusing!!
 
The airliners flying over us measure their distance in nautical miles and their speed in knots and if flying in the west they measure their altitude and flight levels in feet but if flying over the old Soviet areas and China they change height readings to metres.

An important measure they have to know is barometric pressure at sea level and in Europe they use millibars although lately air traffic control are using Hectopascals which is the same thing but Pascal was french so we know who likes that change.

North America generally uses 'inches of mercury' but switch to millibars or hectopascals when they fly over us.
It all seems to work but one of NASA's Mars orbiters was lost in 1999 because of metric/imperial mix-up.
 
The only non-metric athletics race still recognised by the IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations) for new records is the 1-mile. The current holder is Morocco's Hicham El Guerrouj with a time 0f 3 minutes 43.13 seconds. That was recorded in 1999, so perhaps not so many people try this distance these days. Dave.
 
I believe there was a period of a few years in Revolutionary France (1790s), when a 10-hour day and 100-minute hour were introduced, but still with 12 months of 30 days each. It was suspended in the early Emperorship of Napoleon. Fortunately, hours, minutes and seconds do not seem to have changed although we seem to be able to measure smaller and smaller units of time e.g. microseconds (10 to the minus 6 seconds), nanoseconds (10 to the minus 9) and picoseconds (10 to the minus 12 seconds i.e. one millionth millionth of a second. Dave.
 
My education is sadly lacking. Never heard of many of these measurements!

When I had an allotment years ago the size of it was measured in rods. Don't know if they're still measured that way. Have no idea what it converted to in terms yards etc, but I do know it was hard work though!

The arrival of the digital clock would have had an impact too. I suppose the RAF etc already worked in 24 hours, but for most people referring to the 24 hour clock would, I think, have been a fairly new concept. I think it's clear cut with a 24 hour clock as you immediately know if it's am or pm. But even using a digital clock, I still mentally convert it back. Viv.
 
Would these imperial measuring jugs have been used in a pub? It's a set of six, made in pewter by Gaskell & Chambers, Birmingham, c.1826

They graduate in size and each is labelled accordingly, 'Quart', 'Pint', Half Pint', 'Gill', 'Half-Gill' and 'Quarter-Gill'.


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I half knew that rods are something to do with acres but never really thought about it. But with the help of google I now know that a piece of land 4 rods X 40 rods is an acre and a rod is 5.5 yards so therefore an acre is 22 yards X 220 yards. So a rod is a chain? So a rod x a furlong = 1acre. Simples!
Hectares are much simpler!

(Well it was midnight when I wrote the above. In the light of day some is rubbish!

4 rods make a chain
1 chain X 1 furlong= 1 acre.
Was a soccer pitch 8 rods X 20 rods or thereabouts??}
 
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America has not completely gone metric in fact most stores still use the old system which l'm glad of as this grey matter of mine find it hard to comprehend....but l have found the the sign posts around the medical center in Houston have miles and kilometers...that must be because of all the foreign visitors...that is the only place i am aware of the metric system....good thing as l still travel in miles..Brenda
 
So do I Brenda, plus I measure in feet and inches, however, I am just about able to understand centimetres because 30 is one foot and 60 is two feet. It makes small measurements such as fabrics reasonably easy. I still prefer feet and inches, but then I am English and prefer all things English rather than all things continental.
 
Standard lengths of 1 foot, 2 feet, 1 imperial yard, 66 feet and 100 feet are displayed in the Great Hall of the Guildhall, London. The plaque appears to be quite recent as MDCCCLXXVIII is 1878. Dave.

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