Imperial to Metric changeover

[Deano]

I live in a modern metric society but I still think in inches and ‘not’ in cm because I did graduate from high school in the 1970’s and I’m still stuck in the 70’s .

 

[Moneybox]

I live in a modern metric society but I still think in inches and ‘not’ in cm because I did graduate from high school in the 1970’s and I’m still stuck in the 70’s .

Yeah Deano, but we went metric in the 60's

 

[Deano]

Yeah Deano, but we went metric in the 60's

Moneybox, I do not live in Australia, I am Canadian, I went to public schools in Alberta, Canada (where I live now) for 12 years, graduating from high school in the 1970’s, I did all my 12 years of schooling in the Imperial system of feet, inches, and fractions like 3/4”. I went to college then I have been a Carpenter since 1980, in the 80’s, all through the 90’s, and early 2000’s we used the “feet, inches, and fractions Imperial system” about 99% of the time for all building, cutting, and material measurements. I still use about 99% Imperial system to this day right now for measuring (tape) and >>I still think in inches and feet, I “never” think in the metric system for measuring<<, the only metric I think in is temperature and speed. I’m not working and retired now on Canada Pension Plan (CPP), I just bought a new GPX 6000 with a pick (which I cut the handle down from 36” inches to 24” inches), I also ordered a NF 12x7 Xceed directly from Rohan Johnson which came in the post mail which I have not used yet. I want to replace my vinyl siding and just very recently I measured my house up for new metal siding, I did all the measurements in the Imperial system and the metal supply company gave me a dollar quote from those Imperial measurements.

 

[Mackanick]

A little support for Deano. I attended High School in the 70's in Queensland Australia and remember converting from imperial to metric during that time. Below is the time-line for Metrication in Australia, courtesy of Wikipedia.

On 12 June 1970, the Australian Metric Conversion Act passed by the Australian Parliament was given assent. This Act created the Metric Conversion Board to facilitate the conversion of measurements from imperial to metric. A timeline of major developments in this conversion process is as follows:[2]

• 1971 – the Australian wool industry converted to the metric system.
• 1972 – Horse racing converted in August and air temperatures were converted in September.[6]
• 1973 – all primary schools were teaching the metric system alone: many had been teaching both imperial and metric for some years. All secondary schools were now using the metric system.
• 1974 – large scale conversion across industries, including packaged grains, dairy products, eggs, building, timber, paper, printing, meteorological services, postal services, communications, road transport, travel, textiles, gas, electricity, surveying, sport, water supply, mining, metallurgy, chemicals, petroleum, and automotive services. Most beverages, aside from spirits, also converted to metric units by the end of the year. The conversion of road signs took place in July. There was a publicity campaign to prepare the public.[7]
• 1976 – the building and construction industry completed its change to metric measurements (within two years) by January.
• 1977 – all packaged goods were labelled in metric units, and the air transport, food, energy, machine tool, electronic, electrical engineering, and appliance manufacturing industries converted to metric.
• 1987 – the property industry, the last major industry holdout, converted to metric.
• 1988 – with Western Australia fully implementing the change, metrication was completed nationwide and the metric system became the only system of legal measurements in Australia.

 

[Moneybox]

If we can believe everything we read on the internet.......

In 1947 Australia signed the Metre Convention, making metric units legal for use in Australia. In 1970 the Metric Conversion Act was passed, allowing for the metric system to become the sole system of measurement.

Metrication in Australia effectively began in 1966 with the conversion to decimal currency under the auspices of the Decimal Currency Board.

I can remember the problems we had in the 70's when we could no longer buy any imperial tape measures. The old ones became quite valuable

 

[user 4485]

I started my trade course at TAFE in 1988. We were still taught both because a lot of machinery & associated fittings were imperial.
Don't ask me to do anything in thousands of an inch now though

 

[Nightjar]

Engineering trade we rarely used centimetres. If something measured 65cm it was automatically converted to 650mm.
Still have my my imperial & metric vernier and micrometers.

 

[Northeast]

1988 – with Western Australia fully implementing the change,

It took WA only 18 years to fully convert? Not bad. Here I was thinking they were 3 hrs and 30 years behind

 

[Jaros]

Seems to be the current decision making criteria......

 

[Nightjar]

During my fitting and turning apprenticeship all our machines, lathes, milling etc were imperial.
A fishermen rocked up wanting a metric thread machined on a shaft.
Our senior machinist, milled some new gears for a Nuttall imperial lathe to enable metric thread cutting. (Clever bugger)

 

[HarryHoudini]

Well I have been using the Nugget finder 12”x7” coil clearly not all metric not the 30.48x 17.78