Yep, still a mixture. However, having said that, the oil industry up here is seriously metric. Depths are in meters, hole size is mm etc. These are multi million dollar protects done entirely in metric. Temps are in C. Anyone who needs to convert to Fahrenheit to talk about it is usually almost senile. We've been reporting temperature in Celsius for at least 41 years. The exception is that most of us will convert to degrees F for our Bitog discussions. Same thing for gasoline, we haven't sold gasoline by the gallon in over 40 years. Highways have been marked in km for just as long. I'm used to talking about gasoline consumption in liters per 100 km. Most who talk about mpg are old men. However, yes, wood sizes didn't change and golf courses are still in yards. Grocery stores got special permission to sell by the pound because it sounds so much cheaper than by the kilo. Blue Jean sizes are in inches. I heard US cars have metric fasteners. What's with that?
Yup, Snagglefoot has said it well - we (Canadians) use a curious mixture of SI [Metric], US, and Imperial units.
SI was phased in over several years. Our highway signs went from miles and MPH to km and KPH back in '76. There were these cheesy ads from the federal government at the time - as I recall, the happy family is driving on the highway, and has this conversation:
Little girls: "When will we be there?"
Dad: "Well, what does the sign say?"
Girls (in unison): "300 kilometers!"
Dad: "And how fast are we travelling?"
Girls: "100 kilometers per hour!"
Dad: "So how long will it take?"
Girls: "Three hundred kilometers divided by 100 kilometers per hour equals three hours!"
Dad: "Heh, heh, that's pretty good mathematics, girls!"
Girls: "No no, it's Metrimatics!!!"
At this point the entire family, including the previously silent mother, laugh in unison. The parents were probably impressed their daughters were so compliant. And so the tyranny was imposed on us with humour.
We may have gone from Fahrenheit to Celcius around that time as well. In early '79 we went from Imperial gallons to litres, and from ounces and pounds to grams and kilograms. Not sure if centimetres and metres replaced inches, feet, and yards in '76, '79, or somewhere in between. At some point Hectares replaced acres.
Cars were sold with speedometers and odometers in miles through '76 if I recall correctly. Cars were equipped with either Imperial or metric speedometers, depending on the manufacturer, for '77. I think for '78 they were entirely metric.
Around the time the road signs went metric, there were a few short-lived businesses selling decals and stickers for the speedometer. Dad put little sticky metric numbers on the plastic over the speedometer of his '67 Chrysler. The plastic was at least an inch out from the dash, and the parallax error was pretty bad. For my '71 Biscayne and my friend's '76 Bobcat, I installed factory-looking decals that went right on the dash, but of course that was for the speedo only, not the odometer. And of course you got to take the dash apart to apply it.
Alternatively, there was the Kiloverter - a gearbox that went in-line with speedometer cable, that increased the output of the speedo cable by 61% - that is, it ran at 161% of its factory speed. This made the speedo and odometer read metric instead of Imperial - 30 read 48, 55 read 90, 62 read 100, etc. One summer job I had back in the day involved the use of a company truck equipped with a Kiloverter. My crazy fellow summer student liked to bury the needle, not too hard with the Kiloverter installed.
We've never gone completely over; temperature was easy, but we still speak of pounds, feet, and inches when talking about human dimensions. I was introduced to SI in Grade 8 science, so it was not a big deal when Canada went over. I consider myself pretty much "bilingual" w.r.t. Imperial and SI units, but it's surprising to me that younger people, even Millenials, seems to use a lot of Imperial units.
![[Linked Image from osupress.oregonstate.edu]](http://osupress.oregonstate.edu/sites/default/files/Screen%20Shot%202015-04-15%20at%2017.58.00.png "[Linked Image from osupress.oregonstate.edu]")
![[Linked Image]](https://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forums/attachments/usergals/2020/07/full-28211-46428-b6581269_b3ee_4543_9274_7215c136bfeb.png "[Linked Image]")
