-> True, but the metric system is better in other ways, too. The units are
-> all interrelated, which gives a great number of benefits. As far as I
know,
-> there is no obvious relation between a foot and a pound or a gallon.
Actually, there is, in the "Imperial" system that is/was used in
Britain, Canada, etc.. An Imperial Gallon is the volume of ten pounds
of water, so it is similar to the litre, which is the volume of 1 kg of
water.
The Brits tried to rationalize their system in the late 1700s, to try
to make it more "decimal" and similar to the new-fangled metric system
that the French were promoting. They tried to make the furlong (220
yards) the primary unit of length, divided into 10 chains, each chain
with 100 links, and so on. A square furlong is 10 acres. When this part
of the world (Ontario, Canada) was surveyed, it was done on a grid that
was 10 x 10 furlongs. As a result, the major roads in Toronto are 10
furlongs apart. This happens to be almost exactly 2 kilometres (which
also was not an accident), which is convenient now that we've gone
metric.
An Imperial gallon is 8 pints, but each pint is 20 fluid ounces. A
fluid ounce is the volume of one ounce (mass) of water.
Yankland missed out on this attempt at rationalization, since it had
already broken away from Britain.
dow
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