Ooooops

I gave the girl in John Lewis the measurements for curtains in mm she looked at me and said we only work in cms and I don't know how to convert it. The fabric they sell is 54" 78" & 118" what a bloody mess. All because our GOV.UK cannot make their mind up.
 
I know people love a bit of youtube, so here you are .... the "Can Opener"

 
witzend said:
Be easier to lower the road
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wildebus said:
I know people love a bit of youtube, so here you are .... the "Can Opener"

[...]
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As per "the can opener", sometimes you can't lower the road because of the services (sewage, gas, water, electric etc.) running close to the surface. The 11'8" bridge has been raised to 12'4", but that was done by raising several miles of railway track by 8"!
 
QFour said:
I gave the girl in John Lewis the measurements for curtains in mm she looked at me and said we only work in cms and I don't know how to convert it. The fabric they sell is 54" 78" & 118" what a bloody mess. All because our GOV.UK cannot make their mind up.
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So it's education there not the medium, I'm affluent in both so not concerned but it is a type of language and we should not lose one in favour of another, both have their place, my Vernier does inches, mm and fractions for a reason.
 
QFour said:
I gave the girl in John Lewis the measurements for curtains in mm she looked at me and said we only work in cms and I don't know how to convert it. The fabric they sell is 54" 78" & 118" what a bloody mess. All because our GOV.UK cannot make their mind up.
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You should have told her to multiply by 9, divide by 5, and add 32 so that she had the temperature in Celsius ... :ROFLMAO: The problem is not because of Government indecision, more a case of tradition, and curtains are one of those that continue to be sold in fixed imperial measurements. My SiL had some work done by a 'Mates Rates' carpenter with SiL acting as 'apprentice'. Carpenter told him him to cut the wood to 2 inches 1 cm, because that lined up across the tape with the 2 scales of measurement ... (y)

I have a metric only tape measure to avoid these difficulties ...

Steve
 
Pudsey Bear said:
So it's education there not the medium, I'm affluent in both so not concerned but it is a type of language and we should not lose one in favour of another, both have their place, my Vernier does inches, mm and fractions for a reason.
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Didn't Vernier write 20,000 Leagues under the Sea? :oops:

Steve
 
wildebus said:
BTW, 20,000 Leagues has been renamed as those measurements are out of date. The new book is 75300 Furlongs under the Sea :)





(Before anyone says the number is wrong, note I said measurements, plural ;) Why 75300? )
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Won't bother re-reading it, then. David. 75.300 is far too long ... :ROFLMAO:

Steve
 
marchie said:
Carpenter told him him to cut the wood to 2 inches 1 cm, because that lined up across the tape with the 2 scales of measurement ...
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That reminds me of a job I was given to do back in the 1980s to make a cabinet for one of Her Majesty's war canoes. The person who made up the job card had used a 12" ruler to measure up and the drawing contained every variation of eighths, sixteenths, and tenths of inches as well as mm and cm. One dimension even had the value of one and eleven tenths of an inch!
 
GeoffL said:
That reminds me of a job I was given to do back in the 1980s to make a cabinet for one of Her Majesty's war canoes. The person who made up the job card had used a 12" ruler to measure up and the drawing contained every variation of eighths, sixteenths, and tenths of inches as well as mm and cm. One dimension even had the value of one and eleven tenths of an inch!
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This reminds me of some of the US Videos I have seen where the people seem unable to get to grips with the Metric system, but can instantly work out that if a 5/8th drill bit is too small, and a 23/32nd is too big, they must need a 43/64th one. How can flipping in fractions between halfs all the way to 64ths be easier than tenths?

11/10ths of a inch is handy though :D
 
"11/10ths of a inch is handy though"

Always handy to have a bit extra innit :D :D

some of them quote in thousands of an inch, but they seem to be unable to comprehend a Ton, it's always 2000 pounds which is 240 out.
 
wildebus said:
This reminds me of some of the US Videos I have seen where the people seem unable to get to grips with the Metric system, but can instantly work out that if a 5/8th drill bit is too small, and a 23/32nd is too big, they must need a 43/64th one. How can flipping in fractions between halfs all the way to 64ths be easier than tenths?

11/10ths of a inch is handy though :D
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I think it's explained by the '6 months ago I couldn't spell "engineer", now I are one' piece of graffiti, David :ROFLMAO: You're right, I am jealous ... But be grateful, 'cos if you can't spell 'ineptitude', just put 'Marchie', we'll know who you mean, as someone allegedly famous once said ... (y)

Steve
 
Pudsey Bear said:
"11/10ths of a inch is handy though"

Always handy to have a bit extra innit :D :D

some of them quote in thousands of an inch, but they seem to be unable to comprehend a Ton, it's always 2000 pounds which is 240 out.
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Or 160 stone, which is much easier to remember, Kev (y)

Steve
 
An engineer who worked in Shorts aircraft factory in Belfast was chatting in a pub to a guy who worked in Harland and Wolff shipyard which was beside the aircraft factory.
“We work in a precision industry” says the aircraft engineer, “we work to a tolerance of one thou” he boasted.
Says the boy from the shipyard, “that’s no good to us, everything we do has to be dead on”!

Davy
 
TeamRienza said:
An engineer who worked in Shorts aircraft factory in Belfast was chatting in a pub to a guy who worked in Harland and Wolff shipyard which was beside the aircraft factory.
“We work in a precision industry” says the aircraft engineer, “we work to a tolerance of one thou” he boasted.
Says the boy from the shipyard, “that’s no good to us, everything we do has to be dead on”!

Davy
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and then hits the rivet with his calibrated lump hammer ....
 
Pudsey Bear said:
"11/10ths of a inch is handy though"

Always handy to have a bit extra innit :D :D

some of them quote in thousands of an inch, but they seem to be unable to comprehend a Ton, it's always 2000 pounds which is 240 out.
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This is one of the gotchas that make American and English two different languages with enough similarity that speakers of each can understand speakers of the other most of the time. As noted, a US ton is 2,000 lb while an imperial ton is 2,240 lb (14lb / stone; 2 stone / qtr; 4 qtr / cwt; 20 cwt / ton). US and imperial gallons also differ (1 imp gallon = 1.2 US gallons) and by extension, their pints are also smaller than ours! While we drive on the carriageway and walk on the pavement, they drive on the pavement and walk on the sidewalk. They call cars, automobiles; the wings of those cars they call fenders; what they call "hoods" we call bonnets. Boots are trunks, etc. etc.

While these differences might seem trivial, 'gotchas' await even where the same definition might at first sight seem to apply. Take "proprietary" as an example: Webster's defines this as, "of, relating to, or characteristic of an owner or title holder" and a UK definition is, "goods made up and sent out by the company whose name is on the product". Back in the 1990s, a company I worked for entered into a contract where certain items were to be of "proprietary supply" and each party 'understood' that to mean the other would provide those items. This only came to light when my company had manufactured most of the equipment and were still waiting for the customer to supply the proprietary items. Cost to my company was about US$1.4 million and a lot of good will... (thankfully, I wasn't involved in drafting that contract!)
 
I just watched a video where the chap was on a lathe using a 57/64 drill size to tap a hole, that's a bit too keen for me I'd have gone for an inch.
 
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