Thank You Fran. I am retired and a hobbyist machinist. Had I seen this or videos like this much earlier in life my career would have taken a far different turn. The educational films of yesteryear were far better then today's offerings.
When the narrator was testing the viewer and gave out the wrong measurement, me, lacking caffeine and sleep just took his word for it lol. I have to admit I laughed when he did the correction. More modern folk would have trouble watching more than a minute without seeking some form of attention absorption device and would probably have missed that bit.
I once knew an old time machinest who HATED the metric system. He said it just had too many odd numbers after the decimal point. But that's because he was only working off of drawings of things designed with inch measurements and converted to metric. So, 0.38" becomes 9.652 mm. He was OK with "lots of digits" for things he was used to seeing like 0.375". He didn't realize that something designed from the start in metric has more friendly numbers.
worked as a CNC machinist back in the 90s, still have my trusty 6" with the sliding pocket clip..fun fact: since it has metric & english, technically it's an analog computer,(albeit very specialized) since it can convert from mm to inches, 32nds, etc & vice versa, plus the sliding clip is like a 1 number memory.
While spacing out the frets on a guitar my brother was building, he didn't have a micrometer to measure the distance between frets but just worked out the exact measurements in another scale and set them pretty much perfectly. He was a genius my brother he could make anything he put his mind to. He didn't earth the guitar for the longest time but I just used to play it and get the electric shocks lol.
Work in the oil industry in the UK and still mainly work in inches, need to convert if a companies uses metric drawing. Work in half thou's. If calibrating I'm working in tenths of a thou .0001". As our rules have metric on them as well, if it lines up with the metric reading can convert back to imperial
So familiar. Common for me to use my scale under a low power microscope to check chamfer width, etc., when I was machining AMPEX parts in the early 80's at a shop in Redwood City, CA. Good times.
This is freaking awesome! Now I can finally calibrate the scramjet inlet on my jetpack! I just eyeball it most of the time. Kidding aside, these videos are absolutely incredible. I love the no nonsense approach to teaching, lack of commercials, and the sheer practicality of how the information is presented. No goofy cartoons or wasted time. Thank you Fran! Rock on!
Just remember you also get casting scales, where the graduations are deliberately wrong, slightly expanded, so that when used to make a casting mould the finished part, slighlty contracting from cooling, will be correct. Available and typically marked for the material being cast, but other than this small writing you will not notice the difference, until you use it to measure a part, and a different one to cut it.
I started using a 6” steel scale in 1975 when I was training to be machinist, and haven’t been without one since, using it in luthiery, woodworking, building pedals, among other pursuits. At Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery, which I attended in 1978, we also used them as miniature glue scrapers.
When I took Machining and mechanics (Norway, early 90s) we learned both the metric and Imperial systems. But dividing the inch in 10s was something I only came across when I later took up electronics as a hobby. Point one inch headers forexample.
I may be a hardcore metric system afficionado, but like this little educational gem. Now, on to vernier calipers and micrometers... The end block trick is a nice one and I sometimes use it too. Speaking of tricks, here's a tip for y'all: if you want to measure the distance between the centers of two holes of the same diameter, first measure the distance between the outer edges, then between the inner edges, and then calculate the average.
If you have digital calipers, first measure the diameter of one hole and zero the calipers on that measurement, then measure outside to outside to get your center to center measurement.
I remember once my Dad (a former machinist) explained the difference between a ruler and a scale. I don't remember other than a wooden one was a ruler, but an accurate, steel one was a scale. I can imagine the high school shop class that would have shown this film, back when we had shop classes. Too bad we don't have them any more.
I just have to raise my hand as a member of the Cave Research Foundation and mention that Mammoth Cave, like most caves in the United States, is measured in decimal feet, a practice dating back to the 1950s in the case of the Mammoth Cave survey. Mammoth's current surveyed length is 426 miles, known to a maximum error tolerance of 1%. There are over 175,000 individual survey shots in the data set, representing hundreds of thousands of hours of volunteer labor over a period of seventy years, both in the cave, and in data reduction on the surface. Everywhere else in the world, caves are measured in meters (centimeter precision, generally). But the longest cave survey there will ever be, the Mammoth survey, is in decimal feet, and will probably stay that way forever. I've seen the filing cabinets holding all 70 years worth of original notes (including some in my own handwriting), and it's an impressive thing to see.
Does 10 of these decimal feet = a bunch of kids’ feet or, adult feet? 😳😵💫🤣 lol… anyways yeah, I could only imagine how many documents that body of surveys most take up! Seen those caves when I was a kid & must say, absolutely incredible sight to behold in person! Carlsbad Caverns were also incredible! This whole industry standard of trying to stick with decimal maths for measurements was imo, sort of a version of metric, in the sense of sticking too the use of tens. Really quite strange this country DIDN’T switch entirely over too the metric standard, right after around the end of the Civil War, as metric is always SOOOooo much easier to get used to, having everything in 10’s of, 100’s of, 1,000’s of each progressively named step. I recall learning a bit of the history of ASE Imperial origin vs Metric origin; both being to whatever degree, made up standards based on the Yard & Meter conversely but, both having major “inaccuracies” inherently within their respective origins! But, standards being necessary for humanity to evolve to the magnitude it did during the Ind. Res., seems it’d be literally impossible for there to ever be implemented any “better” standard worldwide that actually means something tangible, per MotherNature… symbiotic between humanity & living earth or space around us all. Some might attempt to defend the metric system being just this ‘but’, that original “first” meter rod that’s still heavily protected in a museum in France I believe, was made based on a miscalculation of a fraction of an invisible, imaginary line, from earth’s pole to equator ‘but’, even with said original ‘miscalculation’ of this meter rod, it’s still as arbitrary as the dang Yard of imperial maths’ having been based on the breadth of centerline too outstretched fingertip of some long dead King’s physical size, in that, this planet is NOT or, EVER BEEN a “perfect”, consistent sphere! So, said meridian line has never had & can’t have, a “fixed” length. Crazy to conceptualize but basically, EVERYTHING humanity has attempted to “perfect”, has all been based on made up BS, in the greater scheme of things, making the notion of thinkin’ we’d ever have some means of ‘communicating’ with an actual E.T. Intelligence, rather bleak
@@seanbatiz6620 If we were communicating with ET, the best scale of measurements to use would probably be divided into base 2 (binary). Binary multiples of single Hydrogen atom radii, for example.
The cave was most likely surveyed in US Survey feet, which predate the definition of the international foot. 1 survey foot = 1.000002 international feet. The survey foot was officially deemed obsolete as of Jan 1, 2023.
All surveying in the US has always used uses decimal feet for distances and elevations - not jsut in caves. I was a caver (mostly in West Virginia and SW Virginia) when I was younger - we surveyed using Brunton compasses and survey tape. Our main light source was carbide lamps, which also served to place little soot spots for the survey stations. Electronic distance/azimuth/clinometer stuff like Distos, or LED cap lamps that provide 40 hours of bright light from four AA cells, were way in the future.
As a typeset printer when I was in my teens I used a steel pica rule, 1 PICA = 1/6th of an inch, when I got into guitars I noticed luthiers uses steel rules both 1’ and 6” for adjusting the bridge and other parts of the guitar, I had a difficult time finding a good steel rule, eventually I bought both a a shop for machinist Recently I bought my 16 year old niece two metric rules in steel from Japan This is not boring to me
This is great also sort of a good demonstration why in certain fields they use the metric system something I think scientist Fran knows because it makes some things easier10 inches 250 thousandths which would be 256.25 mm or something along those lines so cabinet makers often use metric system for the same reason also we had a steal tape measure that had metrics and inches in the thousandths before we ended up not using it Woodworkers rulers have what's that 64's
Would have enjoyed this as a kid. Would've helped when I took machinist training in later life-- I was familiar with the concepts, but nothing like a little hands-on..
And you can read measurements in between the markings if the item being measured falls between the lines, though not as accurate as with a caliper. Note they didn't say to not don't bang up the edges of the scale. Ding up the end, your measurements will be off. I remember the movies on how to use a vernier caliper and micrometers too.
Ohh, I want a 100th scale ruler! When I saw BFA I thought it stood for British Film Association and started to expect that the BBC will claim and block the video. Yes, despite the American accent. I mean they have claimed NASA footage
I use these scales on a virtually daily basis. Out of the several I have, only one has the tenths and hundredths marks. Those are hard to find nowadays.
Ohh metric inches. I knew you ‘Muricans would see sense one day 😉 Where would this film have been shown, in high school shop class, or in a grade school / technical college?
I'm a little bothered by the additional significant figure. If you add the last zero, it gives the impression that you've measured with that level of precision when in reality the measurement is only precise to the hundredth of an inch using the steel scale shown.
In civil engineering and surveying, the level rods and tapes and elevations specified on drawings are in decimal feet. And of course US machinist and automotive dimensions are in decimal inches - i.e. a typical spark plug gap is 0.035 inches, a bearing oil clearance is .003 inches. But American mechanics will always say "thirty-five thousandths" not "point zero three five"
I always found how the inch decimal scale is read rather silly.. So you have to say 4 inches, 274 thousandths. Rather than 4.274 inches.. I mean thousandths still make sense as a term, just like microns do in metric. But you can tell by how thousandths are used that it hasn't come from an original decimal system
As a non US resident I am even more confused about there measuring system now 😔, how can it be Metric but it's still in Imperial Inches? that makes no sense at all😔 unless it's Fully Metric as in mm, Cm, Mtrs and Kilometres .
Dividing an inch by 10ths is just another way of dividing an inch. Just as dividing a meter by 1000ths is commonplace. Metric is a much misunderstood word. It's true meaning is how a standard unit of length (which we arbitrarily call 1 meter) is defined. It used to be rods of metal all cut to the same length as a reference bar of metal in Paris. In the USA they chose to translate that reference into feet and inches, whereas as Europe did a simpler thing of dividing it into centimetres, millimeters. So today, 1inch is 25.4mm exactly. However if you took a very old English or American ruler that had been made before the metric meter was accepted as the universal standard of length, its 1inch will be ever so slightly wrong by today's standard. Because its derived from a different reference length. All measurement is is comparing the length of something to the length of that reference 1meter, without having to put them side by side.
A thousandth of an inch is a convenient unit for fitting mechanical parts. It's roughly the thickness of a sheet of paper. A millimeter would be too loose for things that are supposed to slide smoothly, but a micrometer is too precise to be practically achieved. Our car odometers display tenths of miles, too.
*The Steel Scale (1960)* what that America's attempt to go metric, or is it only inches can be divided by 10? Question, what is a 10th of a mile? Don't answer, because there no real answer. What is a 10th of a Kilometre? 100 metres!
Great film to video selections though, sometimes there a bit of a laugh as I'm an Australian, and I was brought up on the correct English and the metric system
Thank You Fran. I am retired and a hobbyist machinist. Had I seen this or videos like this much earlier in life my career would have taken a far different turn. The educational films of yesteryear were far better then today's offerings.
When the narrator was testing the viewer and gave out the wrong measurement, me, lacking caffeine and sleep just took his word for it lol. I have to admit I laughed when he did the correction. More modern folk would have trouble watching more than a minute without seeking some form of attention absorption device and would probably have missed that bit.
@@mantovannni I noticed but put it down to my old eyes.
@@mantovannni A safety blanket too. The stories I could tell.
I once knew an old time machinest who HATED the metric system. He said it just had too many odd numbers after the decimal point. But that's because he was only working off of drawings of things designed with inch measurements and converted to metric. So, 0.38" becomes 9.652 mm. He was OK with "lots of digits" for things he was used to seeing like 0.375". He didn't realize that something designed from the start in metric has more friendly numbers.
worked as a CNC machinist back in the 90s, still have my trusty 6" with the sliding pocket clip..fun fact: since it has metric & english, technically it's an analog computer,(albeit very specialized) since it can convert from mm to inches, 32nds, etc & vice versa, plus the sliding clip is like a 1 number memory.
While spacing out the frets on a guitar my brother was building, he didn't have a micrometer to measure the distance between frets but just worked out the exact measurements in another scale and set them pretty much perfectly. He was a genius my brother he could make anything he put his mind to. He didn't earth the guitar for the longest time but I just used to play it and get the electric shocks lol.
Work in the oil industry in the UK and still mainly work in inches, need to convert if a companies uses metric drawing. Work in half thou's. If calibrating I'm working in tenths of a thou .0001". As our rules have metric on them as well, if it lines up with the metric reading can convert back to imperial
So familiar. Common for me to use my scale under a low power microscope to check chamfer width, etc., when I was machining AMPEX parts in the early 80's at a shop in Redwood City, CA. Good times.
This is freaking awesome! Now I can finally calibrate the scramjet inlet on my jetpack! I just eyeball it most of the time.
Kidding aside, these videos are absolutely incredible.
I love the no nonsense approach to teaching, lack of commercials, and the sheer practicality of how the information is presented. No goofy cartoons or wasted time.
Thank you Fran! Rock on!
Just remember you also get casting scales, where the graduations are deliberately wrong, slightly expanded, so that when used to make a casting mould the finished part, slighlty contracting from cooling, will be correct. Available and typically marked for the material being cast, but other than this small writing you will not notice the difference, until you use it to measure a part, and a different one to cut it.
@@Eduardo_Espinoza No, only older measuring rules.
As a retired a retired machinist for over 30 years. I loved my 6in scale. It was used to measure, scrape and sometimes as a screwdriver.
I am so fascinated by your channel! Absolutely love everything that you share and do. I learn so much! Keep it up! You absolutely rock!
I started using a 6” steel scale in 1975 when I was training to be machinist, and haven’t been without one since, using it in luthiery, woodworking, building pedals, among other pursuits. At Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery, which I attended in 1978, we also used them as miniature glue scrapers.
When I took Machining and mechanics (Norway, early 90s) we learned both the metric and Imperial systems.
But dividing the inch in 10s was something I only came across when I later took up electronics as a hobby. Point one inch headers forexample.
And Fran's magical color correction does another miracle!
The colour correction makes a great improvement. Thanks Fran
Thank you, Fran. I learned something today.
I may be a hardcore metric system afficionado, but like this little educational gem. Now, on to vernier calipers and micrometers...
The end block trick is a nice one and I sometimes use it too.
Speaking of tricks, here's a tip for y'all: if you want to measure the distance between the centers of two holes of the same diameter, first measure the distance between the outer edges, then between the inner edges, and then calculate the average.
If you have digital calipers, first measure the diameter of one hole and zero the calipers on that measurement, then measure outside to outside to get your center to center measurement.
@@sleepib interesting - I only had the old school calipers, no experience with digital. Looks like I'm missing out :)
I use digital vernier calipers every day at work.
Do your two holes need to be the same diameter? because mine don't.
:)
@@steamcastle well, I did some maths and you're right :). I was just overtly cautious.
I remember once my Dad (a former machinist) explained the difference between a ruler and a scale. I don't remember other than a wooden one was a ruler, but an accurate, steel one was a scale. I can imagine the high school shop class that would have shown this film, back when we had shop classes. Too bad we don't have them any more.
Thank you Fran for preserving important ideas and information so we can enjoy them today.
As someone who grew up with metric, the idea of an inch divided into 10th and 100th as a unit of measure is completely new to me.
I feel the main reason for the chest pocket in a machinist shop coat is to have a place for the 6 inch scale.
I use mine daily! Thanks for uploading this!
I just have to raise my hand as a member of the Cave Research Foundation and mention that Mammoth Cave, like most caves in the United States, is measured in decimal feet, a practice dating back to the 1950s in the case of the Mammoth Cave survey. Mammoth's current surveyed length is 426 miles, known to a maximum error tolerance of 1%. There are over 175,000 individual survey shots in the data set, representing hundreds of thousands of hours of volunteer labor over a period of seventy years, both in the cave, and in data reduction on the surface.
Everywhere else in the world, caves are measured in meters (centimeter precision, generally). But the longest cave survey there will ever be, the Mammoth survey, is in decimal feet, and will probably stay that way forever. I've seen the filing cabinets holding all 70 years worth of original notes (including some in my own handwriting), and it's an impressive thing to see.
Does 10 of these decimal feet = a bunch of kids’ feet or, adult feet? 😳😵💫🤣 lol… anyways yeah, I could only imagine how many documents that body of surveys most take up! Seen those caves when I was a kid & must say, absolutely incredible sight to behold in person! Carlsbad Caverns were also incredible! This whole industry standard of trying to stick with decimal maths for measurements was imo, sort of a version of metric, in the sense of sticking too the use of tens. Really quite strange this country DIDN’T switch entirely over too the metric standard, right after around the end of the Civil War, as metric is always SOOOooo much easier to get used to, having everything in 10’s of, 100’s of, 1,000’s of each progressively named step. I recall learning a bit of the history of ASE Imperial origin vs Metric origin; both being to whatever degree, made up standards based on the Yard & Meter conversely but, both having major “inaccuracies” inherently within their respective origins! But, standards being necessary for humanity to evolve to the magnitude it did during the Ind. Res., seems it’d be literally impossible for there to ever be implemented any “better” standard worldwide that actually means something tangible, per MotherNature… symbiotic between humanity & living earth or space around us all. Some might attempt to defend the metric system being just this ‘but’, that original “first” meter rod that’s still heavily protected in a museum in France I believe, was made based on a miscalculation of a fraction of an invisible, imaginary line, from earth’s pole to equator ‘but’, even with said original ‘miscalculation’ of this meter rod, it’s still as arbitrary as the dang Yard of imperial maths’ having been based on the breadth of centerline too outstretched fingertip of some long dead King’s physical size, in that, this planet is NOT or, EVER BEEN a “perfect”, consistent sphere! So, said meridian line has never had & can’t have, a “fixed” length. Crazy to conceptualize but basically, EVERYTHING humanity has attempted to “perfect”, has all been based on made up BS, in the greater scheme of things, making the notion of thinkin’ we’d ever have some means of ‘communicating’ with an actual E.T. Intelligence, rather bleak
@@seanbatiz6620 If we were communicating with ET, the best scale of measurements to use would probably be divided into base 2 (binary). Binary multiples of single Hydrogen atom radii, for example.
The cave was most likely surveyed in US Survey feet, which predate the definition of the international foot. 1 survey foot = 1.000002 international feet. The survey foot was officially deemed obsolete as of Jan 1, 2023.
All surveying in the US has always used uses decimal feet for distances and elevations - not jsut in caves. I was a caver (mostly in West Virginia and SW Virginia) when I was younger - we surveyed using Brunton compasses and survey tape. Our main light source was carbide lamps, which also served to place little soot spots for the survey stations. Electronic distance/azimuth/clinometer stuff like Distos, or LED cap lamps that provide 40 hours of bright light from four AA cells, were way in the future.
@@franklittle8124 Carbide is still used in Mammoth, big time.
As a typeset printer when I was in my teens I used a steel pica rule, 1 PICA = 1/6th of an inch, when I got into guitars I noticed luthiers uses steel rules both 1’ and 6” for adjusting the bridge and other parts of the guitar, I had a difficult time finding a good steel rule, eventually I bought both a a shop for machinist
Recently I bought my 16 year old niece two metric rules in steel from Japan
This is not boring to me
brilliant: practical and educational! they don't make them like they used to ;-)
Well I just learned something that reinforces my understanding of what 1/1000 or 10/1000 of an inch means.
This is great also sort of a good demonstration why in certain fields they use the metric system something I think scientist Fran knows because it makes some things easier10 inches 250 thousandths which would be 256.25 mm or something along those lines so cabinet makers often use metric system for the same reason also we had a steal tape measure that had metrics and inches in the thousandths before we ended up not using it Woodworkers rulers have what's that 64's
Would have enjoyed this as a kid. Would've helped when I took machinist training in later life-- I was familiar with the concepts, but nothing like a little hands-on..
And you can read measurements in between the markings if the item being measured falls between the lines, though not as accurate as with a caliper. Note they didn't say to not don't bang up the edges of the scale. Ding up the end, your measurements will be off. I remember the movies on how to use a vernier caliper and micrometers too.
Ohh, I want a 100th scale ruler! When I saw BFA I thought it stood for British Film Association and started to expect that the BBC will claim and block the video. Yes, despite the American accent. I mean they have claimed NASA footage
Love the films!
I use these scales on a virtually daily basis. Out of the several I have, only one has the tenths and hundredths marks. Those are hard to find nowadays.
Ohh metric inches. I knew you ‘Muricans would see sense one day 😉
Where would this film have been shown, in high school shop class, or in a grade school / technical college?
Vocational Technical school, my guess.
I remember this sort of thing being shown in 7th grade mechanical drawing class (early 1970's for me). Boys only, as I recall.
@@FranLab Surely in grade school - Jr high shop or the like.
I'm a little bothered by the additional significant figure. If you add the last zero, it gives the impression that you've measured with that level of precision when in reality the measurement is only precise to the hundredth of an inch using the steel scale shown.
Great Video
I prefer metric. But if I had one like this. It’s would seem more practical. 😊
My 6 inch steel rule is always ready at my desk.
Nice antennas on your QRZ page.
🍿😁 thanks Fran. Do you have anything on Vernier calipers?
We really tried really, really hard to not switch to metric.
Anything under 0.05” accuracy and I have to use a caliper.
1969... Oh, so far back we have fallen from the good intentions. Somebody said: "Yes, we are going metric, INCH BY INCH."
What telecine do you use?
So glad I have a digital caliper now. LOL
Here before the BBC inexplicably claims the copyright.
In the seventies they weren't teaching English units at all; they were trying to get everyone to use metric.
They're playing the music in reverse in the outro!
Fran does that to keep the music copyright trolls away.
@@franklittle8124 Oh. I assumed this was done by the original creator to make the outro sound more interesting.
Never saw a 1/10th scale ruler. It's a nod to the simplicity of the metric system.
In civil engineering and surveying, the level rods and tapes and elevations specified on drawings are in decimal feet.
And of course US machinist and automotive dimensions are in decimal inches - i.e. a typical spark plug gap is 0.035 inches, a bearing oil clearance is .003 inches. But American mechanics will always say "thirty-five thousandths" not "point zero three five"
lol Imperials. 13 Gnarls are 3/16 Snork are 274 Mollards.
I always found how the inch decimal scale is read rather silly.. So you have to say 4 inches, 274 thousandths. Rather than 4.274 inches.. I mean thousandths still make sense as a term, just like microns do in metric. But you can tell by how thousandths are used that it hasn't come from an original decimal system
As a non US resident I am even more confused about there measuring system now 😔, how can it be Metric but it's still in Imperial Inches? that makes no sense at all😔 unless it's Fully Metric as in mm, Cm, Mtrs and Kilometres .
Dividing an inch by 10ths is just another way of dividing an inch. Just as dividing a meter by 1000ths is commonplace.
Metric is a much misunderstood word. It's true meaning is how a standard unit of length (which we arbitrarily call 1 meter) is defined. It used to be rods of metal all cut to the same length as a reference bar of metal in Paris. In the USA they chose to translate that reference into feet and inches, whereas as Europe did a simpler thing of dividing it into centimetres, millimeters.
So today, 1inch is 25.4mm exactly.
However if you took a very old English or American ruler that had been made before the metric meter was accepted as the universal standard of length, its 1inch will be ever so slightly wrong by today's standard. Because its derived from a different reference length.
All measurement is is comparing the length of something to the length of that reference 1meter, without having to put them side by side.
A thousandth of an inch is a convenient unit for fitting mechanical parts. It's roughly the thickness of a sheet of paper. A millimeter would be too loose for things that are supposed to slide smoothly, but a micrometer is too precise to be practically achieved. Our car odometers display tenths of miles, too.
Decimal inches... just a tacit admission that metric is better!
"Many scales to confuse them all, and to the darkness bind them....:🤔🥴
Yeah lets measure in bananas !
I think I'll stick to millimetres!
Decimal inches [shudder]. 😁
Now do you have the Smaller 1,000ths to 100,000ths...??..
Gotta love how only boys use these when all my kids are girls. No metrology tools for them I guess.
Yeah, that sexist bullshit all over the place... Meh.
Look , Bob, you found the troll who doesn't understand sarcasm. It must be a biological deficit peculiar to males.....😁
The scary part is it’s 1969, not 1909.
**laughs in metric**
If only the Americans were taught metric.
For the quarter dozenth time since crickets stop chirping, I have to say, "We are!"
I wish! And ironically, they call this British monarchy based historical leftover that made it through the revolutionary war "freedom units", hahaha.
@@AlanCanon2222 Here in the US we were learning the metric system in school in the late 1960s and early seventies.
They taught us metric when I was in elementary school in the 80s.
@@KeritechElectronics But we showed THEM, our gallons are different! Neener neener neener!
*The Steel Scale (1960)* what that America's attempt to go metric, or is it only inches can be divided by 10? Question, what is a 10th of a mile? Don't answer, because there no real answer. What is a 10th of a Kilometre? 100 metres!
Great film to video selections though, sometimes there a bit of a laugh as I'm an Australian, and I was brought up on the correct English and the metric system
They days before the vernier was invented...