OCR Text |
Show Measurement System Termed Out of Date Americans and Canadians are proud of their decimal system of coinage, much simpler to understand un-derstand and to tally than the British system. Yet on this continent con-tinent we are still using British system of measurements based according to legend, on length of a king's arm. King Henry I, according to the legend, set the standard measurement measure-ment of the yard as the distance between the end of his nose and the end of his thumb when his arm was outstretched. A more accurate standard has since been set, but the contradictions and confusions of the so-called English Eng-lish system of measurements still exist. How many city people know the length of a rod? How many outside the confines of a race track know the length of a furlong? fur-long? In the even more compli-cater compli-cater field of volume measurement, measure-ment, who can define the difference differ-ence between a cubic yard, a cord and a bushel? In contrast to the prosaic and methodical British, the flighty French use the metric system, a plain and simple plan of meas-pring meas-pring weight, distance, volume and area on a decimal base. Outside Out-side of the English speaking world the metric system is firmly entrenched making for case of communication over language J barriers, says the Christian Science Sci-ence Monitor. |