Metric Measures

Abstract

THE Decimal Association has recently issued a circular on the progress of the metric system of weights and measures in this country, and also two papers written by Mr. Aldred F. Barker, director of textile industries at the Bradford Technical College, advocating the adoption of the metric system in the textile trade. It appears from the circular that the total number of metric weights and measures verified in the United Kingdom during the year ended March 31, 1909, was 8797. As this was the first year in which the obligation upon local authorities to distinguish between metric and, imperial weights and measures in their returns to the Board of Trade was enforced, comparisons of this total with the totals for previous years, as furnished in the returns, would necessarily be misleading; but it is evident that the metric system is making steady headway here. Of the weights and measures verified and stamped in this country during the year in question, 1 in 1280 belonged to that system. Opponents of the metric system have an axiom to the effect that, whatever its merits, its compulsory introduction would be absolutely disastrous to the great textile industry. Mr. Barker's papers form a highly technical refutation of this axiom. He shows that the metric system could be adopted by the industry with a minimum of inconvenience. and that it would, afford a more methodical and practical basis for those mysterious lists and tables which are to the textile trade what the Nautical Almanac is to the astronomer.