Gallons v litres

[McCabe-Thiele (Ted)]

Leaving aside that a US gallon is a 20% smaller than our gallon.we need to pay all that fuel duty & VAT on top of the price to pay our struggling MPs & civil servants comfortably above the minimum wage.

[Athame57]

My earliest recollection of petrol prices was when I was sent on my bike to get a gallon of 16:1 for the lawn mower, two half crowns and enough change to knock on the backdoor of the pub for a packet of crisps and still have some change. The petrol pump was hand cranked.

My earliest memory of fuel payment is odd ball really. We only got a car after my father was posted to Germany, soldiers over there were issued with petrol coupons to be used at BP garages ( also ESSO on autobahns) so he hardly ever needed money at all.

[TrickyMicky]

I'm of an age whereby I remember virtually every school excercise book had a list of measurements and multiplication tables on the back cover. Over the course of time we learnt these off by heart, so, if anyone asked you to multiply two numbers up to 12 x 12 you knew the answer straightaway without having to work it out. My first job in the mid  60's was dealing with salesmens'  figeres along with their wages and income tax calculations. We wqere not allowed to use an adding machine, it had to be done in our heads, the results being checked by a comptometer operator. Anyone remember them?  My next job was as a london bus conductor, taking fares and giving change in good old £sd. Then the dumbing down process started, and we changed to metric currency, and we got totally ripped off. Did anyone notice how quickly a 6d Mars bar suddenly became 6p?  Considering metric calculations were just a case of moving the decimal point a few places, all of a sudden we needed a calculator to work it out for us. In my early married life, my wife worked evenings behind the bar in a pub, when a person ordered a round of drinks, she was expected to total up the cost in her head, and give the correct change at the end. If she was caught writing it down, she would have got the sack as being unsuitable. Now look what happens in a present shop or bar, the sales assistant has to enter each item onto a keypad, the till then tells you the total cost, and how much change to give. Metric is for numpties. Just for fun, ask someone to quickly  give the answer to 7 x 9 and watch their faces, usually mental overload.  Stay safe everyone, and as it's Friday, this evening I will quaff an enjoyable one and a half pints before dinner, (or 2 x 440ml tinnies for the young folk!)

[McCabe-Thiele (Ted)]

My ex was a comptometer operator, she worked in customer accounts at a Vauxhall dealership.
It was a pre-curser to computers - system was installed by K.Louther & Co of Manchester.

I never did use all the data on the back of my exercise book e.g. Rood, Pole & Perch wtf.
I did use quire when I started my paper round.

[TrickyMicky]

Y'know, we are a funny lot really.  myself and many others of my era still think in Imperial measurement terms. and yet, we used  extol  the pros and cons of a good 750cc bike whilst mocking our American colleagues who catalogued them as a 45 cubic incher.  Just to finish, I really cannot arouse any interest in a young lady whose vital statistics are 101.6cms/55.68cms/91.44cms. 

[Orcade-Ian]

Just like most of us on here, I started out with imperial measurements but moved on to metric, which I use regularly and agree with others it's a better system with a base of 10. My lathe and miller are both metric. Compare that with 16 oz in 1lb, 14 lbs in 1 st, 10st in 1 cwt and 20cwt in a ton - glad that went but I still use stones and pounds on the bathroom scale - no idea what I weigh in kg!
The OP was comparing gallons a litres and that really was a big con job - as I've said every penny on a litre meant 4.54 pence on a gallon.
Going slightly off topic, my other gripe is percentage increases - in the old days you got a pay rise of so much an hour, now everyone clammers for a percentage rise.  When I was teaching, our Principal could buy a hell of a lot more loaves with his increase than I could! When compounded it really has widened the gap between high and low earners.


Ian

[Athame57]

- glad that went but I still use stones and pounds on the bathroom scale - no idea what I weigh in kg!

I got weighed at my GPs practice some months ago, when told my weight in Kg I asked them to speak English! 

[taysidedragon]

I use a mix of metric and imperial measurements,  but mostly metric. We have digital bathroom scales which is easy to switch from kg to pounds or stones and pounds. I measure my weight in kilos but my wife always changes it to stones and pounds to weigh herself.

Having modern bikes for years and then getting the 400f, I always used metric measurements (except for wheels and tyres in inches!) When I went back to the dark ages and got an old Triumph I had to recall all the old imperial stuff, sixteenths of an inch, British Cycle thread, British Standard Fine, threads per inch, etc.

If you were designing a measurement system from scratch the metric system makes perfect sense. The old imperial system is crazy, "Let's design a system that's so illogical just to make it as difficult as possible "