Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Imperial Units Of Measurement

Episode Date: August 15, 2022

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedy writer/podcaster Katie Goldin ('Creature Feature' podcast, @ProBirdRights) for a look at why Imperial units of measurement are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Imperial Units of Measurement. Known for being feet. Famous for being miles. Nobody thinks much about them. Let's have some fun. Let's find out why Imperial Units are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmitz, and I'm not alone. I'm joined by one of my favorite guests ever. Katie Golden is an incredible comedy writer and podcaster. I hope you are already a fan of her podcast entitled Creature Feature over on iHeartRadio. She's also a writer for the Some More News channel on YouTube and the comedy writer behind at ProBirdWrites on Twitter. Also, I've

gathered all of our postal codes. I've used internet resources like native-land.ca. I want to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Also want to acknowledge that in North America and in many other locations in the world, native people have been here and are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. Also, my guest, Katie Golden, she taped this show in the country of Italy. And as I understand it, Italy is separate from the context I just described. Today's episode is about imperial units of measurement. That's a patron chosen topic. Many thanks to Kyle Benton for that excellent idea and to everybody who voted for it over at SifPod.fun. What a perfect thing to actually know more about. So please sit back or continue driving, thinking of it in miles, but maybe switch to kilometers or the other way around. Why not change it up today? Why not get wild?

it up today why not get wild either way here's this episode of secretly incredibly fascinating with the great katie golden i'll be back after we wrap up talk to you then katie golden it's so good to have you back as always. And of course, I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it. How do you feel about imperial units of measurement? Man, they're messing me up so much. I moved from the U.S. to Italy, and it's really hard to make the shift from imperial to metric. Metric makes a lot more sense, I think. It's a lot more logical, but it's still, they'll say like, hey, it's 40 degrees outside. I'm like, what does that mean?

And it's actually bad. It's very bad when it's that hot. Yeah. I didn't mean to laugh at how hot it is, but no it's it's it is funny i mean i'm laughing that could be because of the heat but yes it is uh it's like it's like 40 degrees that's downright chilly and you step outside and you melt your skin melts off of your body so yeah it's bad and also as i i think i've read the sources right, and I had always just assumed Fahrenheit was an imperial unit. And it basically is in practice.

It turns out like temperatures are not quite part of that system. It's just like so. So we so we both have imperial for like measurement, which doesn't make any sense. And then we just have our own like heat measurement system as well. Just because like, why? Because we have to be different? Yeah, I was especially excited to book you for this one because I think I don't really experience it much remaining in the U.S., but like the whole imperial unit system Fahrenheit thing feels like a real lemon, like a car lemon. I'm just really stuck with it and I can't take it

back to the dealership and I can't get out of it. It's just how my brain has been formatted. It's a real albatross, which weighs around like, I don't know, 500 grams. But yeah, I mean, now my understanding, I've had to relearn units of measurement and it's usually food-based because that's when I use them. So I understand what 300 grams of pasta is now. I have a sense of what that is. I know, because like that's, you know, I get 300 grams of pasta to share with my

husband for dinner. I get it. I understand now what 300 grams is in pasta, but that's the only way I can learn is like, you know, but when I first came here, it's like, well, what's a reasonable amount of pasta? Is it a kilogram? It's like, nope, that I'm imagining. Like, it's like nope that i'm imagining like it's like when mickey mouse is dealing with all the brooms and that sorcerer's apprentice thing like you're just overwhelmed by pasta because you didn't know what the measure was gonna be exactly i don't know what i'm asking for like they'll say something like you want you want half a kilo of this it's like yes and then it's too many it's too many grapes and it's like oh no no I didn't want that that's that's too many I didn't know what half a kilo of grapes looks like uh so it's been it's been a learning experience I've sometimes come home with too many beans that's the only way

because I can't admit to them I don't know metric. That would be mortifying. Oh, yeah. So, you know, it's like, yes, I meant to buy like half my body weight in plums. Thank you, sir. You have all those grapes. They're like, good luck with the wine production facility you must operate. And you're like, thank you, I do operate one of those. Yeah. operate and you're like thank you i do exactly yeah yeah so so i i would love to understand why why i was ruined by imperial why why the the u.s set me up for failure when it comes to

living in europe and consuming food and not you know being the weirdo who comes away from the market with like a huge sack of green beans. Yeah, and me too. Like I, this is a patron chosen topic. And on the one hand, I went into it a little overwhelmed because like there's so many units of measurement. A lot of them have murky origins. And there's so many countries that the British Empire has left parts of this or all of this behind in, you know? It's always the British. Yeah. And like the short answer for a step of this is the British did it to us Americans and to a bunch of other people. But even though it's a humongous topic,

this won't be totally comprehensive for fundamentally was very excited to find out the whole deal. What's going on? Like, why. Why do I think in feet and inches when much of the rest of the world is on a just objectively simpler system based on decimal grade? Yeah, no, I'm constantly faced with how silly our units of measurement are. I was at the doctor's and she's asking me, well, how tall are you? And it's like, I was at the doctors and she's like asking me like, well, how tall are you? And it's like, um, you know, five, six. And she's like, you're 56. What? It's like, no, no. Oh, oh. Um, you know, it's like, no. How many, how many like meters are you? It's like, but when you're not really raised sort of to think in terms of those measurements. And then someone's like, wow,

it was like nearly like 10 meters long. It's like, and that means what exactly? You know, it's, uh, uh, so yeah. I, if somebody says 10 meters to me, my American head and also sports fan has like, okay, so that's like 10 yards on a football field, which is not a useful way to think about distances or anything else like i don't even play football that's just like what i'm reaching for even though the rest of the world just like understands that yeah it'd be nice if like there was something universal that everyone like we something that is the same size that is in every society that we could use as like a measurement. Like, I don't know. I don't know what even that would be. What, like what, what does everyone share? Is it eggs? Do we all have chicken eggs and we could just have one, one

chicken egg? We all know. I mean, they, but chicken eggs are kind of variable. They come in different sizes. So I don't know what that would be. And if listeners remember the shoe sizes episode of the podcast from a while ago now, but it turns out those are based on an old imperial unit called the barley corn, which is based on a perceived normal width of a like barley grain. But of course, that varies. There's different varieties of barley different plants grow different ways it's it's incredible that they were like this is the chicken egg for us this is the standard corn that's such a like and so just everyone is like oh yeah i know what a barley corn is i know what that is like i think it was a big time of farming. There were so many farmers. It was like,

we all farm, right? And then one weirdo's like, I'm a medical doctor or some other job. And they're like, get out of here, non-farmer. Right. I guess doctors would measure things in like duodenums or something like, yeah, that's like five duodenums. Yeah. We use Frankenstein units here yeah sure uh yeah yeah you know uh how many how many teeth high are you how do you even decide what is the smallest unit of measurement like what what do we base this on how do we have this standard uh you know very early on it had to be like you know barley corn barley, corn or whatever, you know, peas. I don't know. And I think that that leads well into the stats and numbers.

And also this episode, there's going to be one main takeaway at the end. But otherwise, the whole main show is stats and numbers. So this is a big one this week. And this week that is in a segment called. And this week that is in a segment called How does a statsman, podcaster, host of SifPod Go on and on to share some fascinating thoughts The word got around, they said this podcast is insane, man And the world is gonna know your name

What's your name, man? Alexander Schmidleton My name is Alexander Schmidleton. My name is Alexander Schmidleton. There's a million stats I have to share. Just you wait. Just you wait.

Nice. I wish I had a lighter. I wonder if people are allowed to do that in Broadway theaters. There's probably an usher who freaks out. Yeah. Yeah. Those theater kids, when they become ushers, they have a fierceness to them, and they will tackle grandmothers to preserve the sanctity of Hamilton. It's a very solemn duty. Yeah.

And that name was submitted by Vivek Radhakrishna vivek thank you buddy um and we have a new name for this segment every week please make a misleading wagon as possible submit to sifpod on twitter or to sifpod at gmail.com uh and this topic galaxy uh enter sandman oh i don't know if that one's come up i can't't remember. But there's a Spotify playlist by listener Xander. So if it's on there, I've done it. That's what I'm coming up with. The first number here is a year. The year is 1824.

1824 is the most recent major British codification of imperial units of measurement. The British Parliament passed a Weights and Measures Act in 1824. And so when we're talking about imperial units, it's mostly stuff from that law with some slight updates, including one big one we'll talk about. And then also these units come from time before that. That law is mostly updating units that are from all sorts of years, especially in the distant past of England, usually.

So they had a system of measurement, but then they're like, okay, we've got to make a law about this, I guess. Was it like when it was first, sort of they're like, I guess we have to make this standard because some people are using barley corn. Some people are using human teeth. We got it. We got to set some rules here, people. Yeah.

And this one, apparently this one condensed the system a bit like there were previous laws by, you know, 1700s, 1600s. Like like there are parliamentary laws on this. And there are also laws from the time when the king would be the main lawgiver in England. And so it's a, it's just this evolving system that has sometimes been dictated by like one guy and his advisors. So like, so there's just one guy who decides like my foot should be the standard of measurement. Oh. And it'll be, it'll be called Gerald's foot. And that unit, the foot in particular, apparently there's an internet claim that one king was the one. And then there's other sources that say that's not actually what's going on.

But we are pretty sure the foot comes from some ideal of a probably adult male human foot. Yeah. Well, isn't that just typical? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like that seems pretty, pretty standard. We had this, I mean, in medicine too, it's like we based everything on just like, ah, this is a man's body type. And so this is how medicine is now. Uh, and I guess we did that for everything else. Like this is, this is what units of measurements are. And this is how much pasta you get, how much can fit in a man's hand is how much pasta you have for dinner. Yeah, pretty much. And you're like, I want grams of pasta. And they're like, she must be a lady. She doesn't respect manhand pasta.

Quick away with her. She has the vapors. Yeah. Flipping briefly to another system, the next number is 1799. 1799 is the year when two French scientists completed their efforts to create the metric meter. Because the metric system could be a whole different episode. In a modern context, it's kind of the opposing elephant in the room of these imperial units. And the metric system, its origins come from the French Revolution starting in 1789.

And the French tried to put... They had to measure those guillotines because they didn't want to miss. The physics of those things are very important. The basket placement, you can't have the head fly off, miss the basket, and hit people in the crowds. Although, I'm sure that would be very entertaining. But, yeah, I mean, you know, all those things. They're like, you know, put the basket, you know, just a little ways away from the guillotine, and you don't have a standard measurement. You're going to have some accidents. You're going to have to talk to HR, and there's going to be a lot of scandals.

So the French Revolution brought us the metric system. What happened? brought us the metric system, what happened? Yeah, it turns out, and I think we touched on this in either the time zones episode or the daylight savings episode, because the French tried to decimalize everything. And decimalization is you just put it on a base 10 system. So they went as far as trying to make months and days based on base 10. They tried to make a clock where it's a 10 hour day, but hours are different than we're used to. And the lasting success of this was the metric system, where all the units are multiples of 10. I mean, it makes sense.

Most of us have 10 fingers. So, yeah, it is interesting that we have so many measurements that are not base 10 because you'd think that you know 10 fingers 10 things yeah it would be like pretty easy yeah but uh we just haven't done that a lot with with all kinds of different stuff uh in a especially the the british and british influenced world we're like no we're gonna learn weird multiples of 12 and other things. Yeah. Yeah. That is strange. Cause like with time too, it's like the clock having a 12 hour clock is a bit weird.

Yeah. It doesn't really make sense. Most people don't have 12 fingers. There's no 10 hour. So they tried to make a 10 hour clock and it just didn't, didn't take off. Yeah. They, uh, especially in the switch over, I think there's pictures linked in Time Zones episode of like a clock with both versions of hours marked on it. And then extra hands to monitor which hour system was at which time.

And they were trying to fundamentally change that. Yeah, it was probably because like their favorite like TV shows, they just couldn't relearn the schedule. You know, like Cooking with Robespierre they it was like always at 6 o'clock and then you just can't unlearn that Cooking with Robespierre

is just him staring at the camera sharpening knives for an hour there's no food going on it's just a threat it's just really brutal everybody's so hungry yeah There's no food going on. It's just a threat. It's just really brutal. Everybody's so hungry. Yeah, yeah. I guess there would be like reality TV shows that had stuff to do with sort of like mass executions.

And that would be fun. It would be wacky and wild to have TV back in revolutionary France. But I am sad that despite all the beheadings, they didn't give us 10 hour clocks. Seems like a waste. Yeah. And the metric system stuck, but it took a while. And since it could be a whole nother episode, real briefly about it, I love how they tried to figure out the meter because this is two French scientists, Pierre Michon and Jean-Baptiste Joseph de Lamb. Long names, fun. But they basically both started in Paris. One went north, one went south. And then they got, like using astronomy, they got a calculation of the distance from Earth's North Pole to Earth's equator. So like half the Earth going north to south. And then they divided that into a fraction of 10 millionths. Wow. So one 10 millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator, that was the standard for the first metric meter.

I mean, it's a lot better than some of the other French experiments I've heard about during the French Revolution. Oh, sure. Like, there was, I think there was another guy who actually got beheaded and, like, had someone measure how many times he blinked after getting beheaded. So, and they were, like like putting birds inside vacuums like not not um hoover vacuums but like jars that had the air sucked out of it to see what would happen to

these poor birds so yeah science was um wacky uh and i think at that time so it's kind of refreshing where they're just like yeah we're going to do some basic earth math and give you a unit of measurement that's based on the size of the planet. It's like, are you sure you wouldn't want to like try to just eat milk and see how long you can blink after being beheaded? Yeah, really. Right. Either really gentle or really crazy brainstorms. Right. The thing going on. Yeah. Right. Either really gentle or really crazy brainstorms. Right. Is the thing going on.

Yeah. Right. The calendar guys were like, what if every day of the year was named after a different plant? Like that was the thing they were doing, which is just really sweet. And then there were other guys like that. Cut, cut my hand off and I'll scream and we'll measure it. Like, no, stop.

Stop it. How many fingernails can I eat until I explode? Yeah. And then this metric system, it's pretty straightforward, but also people were so used to other units, including imperial units that it bled over. And so the other number about metric is 1812, because in the year 1812, Napoleon is in charge and abolishes metric. And it doesn't come back in France until 1840. And the BBC interviewed Northwestern University historian Ken Adler. He says that, quote, it took a span of roughly 100 years before almost all French people started using metric.

So what was Napoleon's problem? He, like, things were basically going badly for his government. Like, 1812 is right when he's having a terrible time in Russia invading, you know. And so he was just reaching for any change that could make him more popular, basically. And there were enough, like enough people, especially older people, who were used to non-metric units. And he tried to be like, hey, I can do this. How about this?

And so that was why he got rid of it. Man, we've always been that way. Anytime we try any kind of, I guess, just housekeeping in terms of our language or math, it's like, you're telling me I have to learn a new thing? I'm 40. I'm basically dead. I don I have to learn a new thing. I'm 40. I'm basically dead. I don't want to learn any new thing. Thank you. I'm 40. I'm basically dead is one of the two political parties of the U S that's amazing. Uh, yeah. Yeah. And, and that also like,

Yeah. And that also, like, I had thought before researching that metric had just been popular longer because it's so prevalent across so much of the world now. And no, like, it's a relatively recent dominant thing. And that left room for stuff like British Imperial units to get a real foothold in places like the U.S. Oh, I didn't mean to do that. But yeah, there you go. Oh, sure, you didn't mean to do that. No one believes you, Alex. A real 21.572 centimeters, whatever it is. Yeah. Three nerds just laughed. You, me, and one audience member. No, they all laughed. They love it. Got them. You nerds just laughed. You, me, and one audience member. No, they all laughed.

They love it. Got them. You nerds love it. It was Napoleon, and his laughter was, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho. That's how he does it. Ho, ho, ho, ho. Yeah. But yeah, and then that leaves us with a world where there's room for these other weird units.

And the next unit, or the next number is a unit it is six feet yes and six feet is the length of an imperial unit called a fathom i never knew what a fathom was but that's what it is that isn't i've never heard of fathom um it i think i knew it from uh being a fan of stories like Horatio Hornblower and Jack Aubrey and other like 1800s British Navy stuff. They talk about fathoms a lot. I see. Like in what context? Like the man was nearly a fathom tall as he killed a sea turtle and chewed its head off.

I don't know what. You could kind of use it that way, just because of average heights, but it turns out that fathoms started out as a measurement of... And this is one of many imperial units based on an adult male. Oh, of course. Yeah, here we go. Here we go again. Yeah. A fathom is like a man's arms outstretched. From there, it became for some reason the dominant unit of measuring the depth of water. Like nautical people started using it for how deep the water was below the boat. I see. So, hmm. I would have thought because like if you stretch your arms out, it's like you're showing how big a fish is you caught or you're trying to hug someone i don't really like when i'm underwater i don't kind of like go sideways and like stretch my arms

out but i guess yeah it's so random what's because like i've heard of like leagues under the sea but you're saying they're like fathoms fathoms under the sea yeah and because leagues that's part of why this show is not going to be comprehensive. Like there's so many different weird old units like leagues. We cannot cover the Kraken in this episode. Right. And I tried to catch a Kraken in the preparation and I just, I'm not skilled enough in my submarine to do it. Because yeah, a fathom, according to Merriam-Webster's dictionary, the word fathom comes from the Old English fathom, which means outstretched arms.

And then by the 1600s, it was firmly established, especially in the British Navy, as a water depth unit. And then from there, the word became the verb fathom, too. And the verb means to measure by a sounding line, which is still a water depth thing. But then from there in like modern usage, fathom can just mean like trying to understand anything. Right. Like I'm trying to fathom why you did this. Right. It's like unmeasurable, I guess. Like I cannot fathom this means I cannot measure underwater with my arms this thing. Yeah, right. It's just this weird progression to not poop out Imperial units too much.

Like, it does make sense that a lot of... Embrace your dark side. I hate them. There is like an understandable role of human body parts as a measurement unit across the world and across like earlier history before you could get a ruler from somebody you know yeah because you can't lose like well you can but i mean you know your body is just there it's not like a thing you have to stick in your pocket it's just your body and you're like this is like that's how I guess that's how we measure horses like like hands like this is how many hands this horse is.

Whoa, you will you will not believe what the very next thing in my dock is. Next number is four inches, which is the imperial unit that is a hand. Yep. Wow. I that is unfathomable that I would guess that. That is unfathomable that I would guess that. And I think I had heard of this, but yeah, that's cool that you had also heard of. This is like a weirdly persistent use case specific imperial unit. The hand is a very old imperial unit that is now exclusively used for measuring horse heights. Right.

From the ground to the withers, which is the top of the shoulders. Yes, yes. Which, you know, like when you are measuring a horse, I always thought like a horse just would not stand for a measuring tape being brought out. You have to like carefully use your hands because as soon as you get the measuring tape out, the horse gets insulted and angry. But yeah, I mean, you know, it's like,'s hard. It's like, what do you do? You like put one hand on the horse and then put one hand under that hand and you're like, all right, well, that's one. And then down, like, I can't imagine the horse being that patient, but I guess they

are. Yeah. And it would, it would also take a while I think. Cause like people can't see the zoom, but Katie did a gesture of her hand upward for a hand measurement. And that's how I thought of it, too. But it's actually sideways. Yeah. It's like across the width of, again, an adult male hand. God. Is perceived to be four inches.

Yeah. So that's so that's like twice as many putting your hands next to the horse as I imagined. That's a lot more work, work guys than you needed to do. I guess it makes sense though because like fingers uh fingers are a thing so like using your fingers to measure things like the width of one finger I've seen in a lot of like historical documents like being you know this is how many fingers this thing is um so then if you you would continue with that method of measurement like with all uh four of your fingers yeah right like it's it maybe is more standard than the hand lengths or something and like they decided hey there's another body part i can use but the other thing is like you

can just measure four inches now you You don't need to use hands. And it's a measurement that comes from pretty early in the history of this. England's King Henry VIII in the early 1500s codified a hand. Wasn't he the guy whose legs were all kind of messed up and he killed a bunch of people? Who am I thinking of? Yeah, Henry VIII killed his wives and had a gout i believe and stuff yes yeah okay so he was also doing uh freelance measurement modification in between his busy life of dealing with his chronic gout and also killing his wives he somehow found the time for his true passion, measurement. Yeah.

Yeah, and this one, specifically people in horse racing the most, not so much like horse farming, are way into hands for horse heights. And according to the magazine Horse and Hound, which is a British magazine about this. You're saying it wrong. The horse and the hound. yes that's right you gotta like attack the h's like you're angry at h i need to go to a private school with unfair admission standards for many years and then come back and tape this uh yes yes but uh they say that we don't really know why it's lasted. It's probably just that people who are into horse racing wanted to have a tradition.

Yeah. And it's remained the horse height measurement in Britain, the U.S., Canada, Australia, Ireland, South Africa, and India. And many of those countries have dropped imperial units, especially India. But specifically the horse measurement hand has lingered. It's because they like petting the horsies. Because, you know, it's an excuse to put your hands on the horse. Like, I'm going to measure you, horsey. I'm going to measure you, maybe give you some scratches.

I'm going to go find out how many hands our cats are i want to do that now it's a good encouragement to pet them more but yeah like and that's one of the fun things about imperial units is that hands and fathoms and other measurements that are that could be like a thousand years old have to some extent been codified often and then in super specific cases like water depth of boats or horse heights have like lingered it's it's a very do we still use uh fathoms for boats not really but you can and like if you bothered to use a fathom people would be would assume you're probably doing boat stuff yeah okay that's good to know if i want to infiltrate the boat scene you're like how how many fathoms is that bad boy

then they'll think i know what i'm talking about just walk up go to the go to the docks go to the wharf be like just you know casual casual point to somebody's boat being like yeah but that's but that's around three fathoms you know yeah i know i know a three fathomer when i see it i'm taking to the sea now uh yeah no it's uh that's interesting uh we we uh i guess the more niche your hobby is, the more likely you are going to want to retain some of the more like fanciful jargon. I think so. Yeah. Even football is not niche, but I feel like yards are a unit that I so strongly associate with it. And it's because somebody picked it a long time ago and then the sport got popular. Right. Otherwise, yards, I might not know what that is even and then flip into the metric system which i feel like is much

more universal all its uses are just like for everything but the next number here is april 1st of 1962 so april fool's day 1962 that's when Metric sailed the ocean blue. I know this mnemonic. April of 1962, that is when the country of India dropped imperial units for weights and distances. And there's a little progression of within Indian independence from Britain, they pretty rapidly adopted metric, partly to firmly establish they were not part of the British Empire anymore. I like that. Yeah. Just like you take your silly units, imperialist units, and, you know, shove them up your British trousers, right?

Am I right? Yeah. Yeah, in Indian independence, the wheels started really moving on that in 1947. And then there was a partition. It's an entire history that I won't rudely summarized. But in the mid-1950s, India added the metric system to a set of official measurement systems for the country, including imperial units. And then 1962, they dropped imperial for weights and distances. 1963, they dropped it for volumes. And according to the English-language news site, theprint.in, There were lots of reasons for that, but one of them was

to affirm Indian independence. Another was to get way into metric to kind of bring together the country because there's not just one India. There were all sorts of different local cultures, languages, and also old measurement systems from before the British. And so it was also to bind the country together more to say we're all metric instead of British or other. Yeah, that's really interesting. I feel like that that is often the case when you have a country that used to be many different countries and can have like many different cultures, dialects. I mean, that's the case here in Italy, like used to be just different nations different

completely different languages sometimes and it's like uh you know after unification it's like actually now we're one big blob uh so then like I'm sure there are things like not kind of things that that you have to do if you try to get people used to being like a nation, like maybe it's unifying under like a single language or like, uh, you know, under metric, uh, which, you know, I guess, I guess math is inspiring. I don't know. You could do fireworks or get people really into math and to base 10. Especially the base 10 part. It turns out it was like a pride in Indian culture thing was part

of the argument. Oh, interesting. Because according to Ashish Velkar, senior lecturer in economic history at the University of Manchester, this was something that future Prime Minister Jawarlal Nehru really like seized as a thing of, we should do metric in India because Hindu mathematicians in earlier in history helps pioneer the concept of the number zero and pioneer other core elements of like base 10. And so he argued that the not base 10 Imperial stuff was much less Indian than metric. Wow.

I take it back. That is as exciting as a fireworks. I think that's great. And the nice thing about that is you retain your fingers. In this case, you retain the base 10 fingers, but if you use too many fireworks, then you're going to have to use like base seven. Right. A leader is like, we're, uh, we're doing base nine now. And it's like, did you blow off a finger in an accident?'s like no you got no yeah be careful with fireworks you guys serious business boy yeah we we got through the fourth here uh it was fine i i don't i don't like doing fireworks personally but yeah

everybody was up to it yeah yeah my opinion on fireworks changed around the same time i got a dog uh because yeah yeah boy they're they're very pretty they're very pretty but then you know spend half of your time being like it's okay baby this guy's not exploding so also i i had not been remembering my doc very well this is an amazing next number the next number is july 4th of 1790 i can't believe like you're really prophetic in the zone here yeah that's right it's just all this math it's now i'm seeing the universe and metric like neo sees through the matrix it's all just like all base 10 i can predict your next move you. You're going to try to segue right about now. Segue.

Whoa. Whoa. So July 4th, 1790. So after the Independence Day, July 4th. But that is the date when Thomas Jefferson, who was Secretary of State at the time, he published a report on units of weights and measures for the new United States. Nerd. Sorry. Reflex. Go ahead.

That is apparently the House of Representatives was like, who's the biggest nerd? We're going to deputize them to do this. They picked Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. And the Library of Congress has the whole report. But according to, again, Ashish Velkar at University of Manchester talking about this, apparently Jefferson made two decisions that lasted for the U.S. He said that American currency should be a decimal system, which was actually really novel then. Like not very many countries had decimal currency at the time.

But he said, American currency, let's do this. And I'm partly influenced by the French. What did we do instead? Like fractions, like a hay penny is like a half penny or something. It was a lot of I don't have the exact ratios with me but like the british pound until relatively recently in history would break down into shillings and then into pence and it was not base 10 like now it's 100 pence to a pound and it's decimal but before then it was some like 12th or 16th or something yeah yeah what's wrong with the i'm i apologize to British listeners, but also what's wrong with you? And like, as much as we're bummed about the albatross of all U.S. weights and measures and everything, like dollars and cents has been pretty straightforward for a long time.

It's actually been really convenient. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, so like Jefferson said, let's do this very modern decimal currency. And then he also said, let's basically retain British imperial units of weights and measures. And he said, like, the first settlers from England brought these over. These are a tradition of ours. Let's retain that.

But I thought we were like, no, screw you, England. We're going to be independent. I thought that was the whole thing. You would think. And especially Jefferson being so pro-French, like, you would think he would have been like, let's drop it. But one of the biggest reasons he didn't is that this is 1790, and it's kind of before the French got the metric system going. So he was a little too early. And he was like, well, of the systems out there, I guess Imperial, like that's kind of what we have and metric doesn't exist yet.

So let's do that. Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, that's really bad timing. That is too bad. Yeah. Cause we, cause he was into decimal, we know from the currency pick, but there just wasn't an obvious decimal measurements yet.

So he didn't do it. Right. He just, little Mr. Smarty Pants couldn't figure out that maybe we should do base 10 measurement system instead. Yeah. So close. Too lazy to measure the Earth to the equator. You know, where's that? Where's that American uh you know pull yourself

up by your bootstraps and measure the earth attitude come on waiting around for the french to invent it like oh we don't we can't invent new measurement i just i just imagine someone like pulling up their bootstraps and they knock over their big telescope in front of them. Like it's an awkward physical movement. Like, oh, no. Oh, geez. Yeah. Yeah.

It's yeah, it is. It is not perhaps physically possible, which is maybe the meaning of the phrase. But now it's just used. It's one of those funny sayings where it's like now people use it. And ironically, like just pull yourself up by your bootstraps it's like the point of that saying is that you can't do that physically yeah just like you can't float on a on a like you know it's looney tunes physics like where you can float on the odor of a pie you You can't lift yourself up with your own pants or your own bootstraps. And it does, like, as much as I oppose the people who seriously say

pull yourself up by your bootstraps, I was raised on Looney Tunes. Like, I do appreciate a wacky movement. Yeah, like when Looney Tunes grabs the back of their pants and lifts themselves up. It's an appealing notion. I'd like to be able to do that, but nevertheless. I'd like to get my duck bill blown off and then put it back on the right side of my head. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I'd like, I'd like to be able to like run off a cliff and then like, if I don't notice I've run off and then if I build up enough momentum, I can actually get back onto the cliff.

As long as I start moving my legs really fast, I'll be able to get back there. That's America. Yeah. That's America. Thank you. Yeah. With our feet and our roadrunners. All right. Off of that, we're going to a short break, followed by the big takeaways. See you in a sec. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks

to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience.

One you have no choice but to embrace because, yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. And then the other other thing Jefferson did with our measurements is because he made this decision in the 1790s. And from there, Congress in the country was like, okay, these kind of units, some of our unit decisions are from before the latest British update. Because if people remember the first number, 1824, that's the latest main British update.

And so there's also divergence where technically the U.S. is on what we tend to call U.S. customary units. We're not on imperial units. So there's weird little variations too and this was a really important jefferson moment for how this all works i see great so like our patch notes don't line up with the british patch notes that's that's great good good job guys like hey it's me tom again in this, we're fixing some bugs and some errors. We are nerfing the yard and whore frost. And this next number is the biggest difference, because apparently most ways it's the same.

But the next number is 1.20095. Ah, yeah, I know that number. I like that one. It's a good one. Good. And it's about 1.2. That's the ratio of difference in size between U.S. gallons and imperial gallons. There's a pretty major difference. That's great. That's wonderful. So wait, does the UK still use gallons? They do. Yeah. The source here is a book called Measure for Measure by science writer Alex Hebra. He says the British gallon is bigger than the US gallon. It's about 1.2 US gallons. And that's because US gallons come from before that 1824 standardization. So the U.S. gallon is based on something called a wine gallon from the 1400s. Oh, that sounds good.

So it's coming from like alcohol measurements. And then the main way this difference is a problem is Canada. Canadian gallons are the imperial one, based on what I'm reading. The U.S. gallon is in the U.S. and in a few Latin American and Caribbean countries, but the Canadian gallon is still that British imperial gallon, which is larger.

Right, right, yeah. It's all a real boondoggle for the big British Commonwealth countries. And they apologize the whole time. Right. I just thought I would. They apologize in Suris, which is a Canadian unit. That's a Canadian. Suri is equal to like one USFU.

One USA, I'm walking here. Right. And then, because the next number here is 1971. That is the year when Canada officially declared a switch to the metric system, 1971. However, due to proximity to the U.S. and our influence, and then also due to a conservative party victory in the 1984 Canadian elections and prime minister Brian Mulroney comes in, they like stopped the switch to metric and then pulls a Napoleon basically. Yeah. It's like, I love, I love that. Like, it's like any, any change, no matter what, like conservatives are, it's like, it's like, nope, bring back my horse hands and my, my, my fingers of bread.

And especially in the bonus, we'll talk about Brexit. Like, but throughout kind of a lot of political history, one party has seen an advantage in stopping or starting a measurement system change. Like you can get some people to vote for that. So there you go. That's fascinating. I mean, I wonder who's like a single issue voter for units of measurement. I imagine that there are some where it's like that is that is like maybe someone who owns like a hot dog stand and they like advertise footlong hot dogs. And it's like, I can't have that change.

That's that's my whole business model. I don't even know what a foot is in centimeters. Twenty three point some centimeters. That's not catchy. That doesn't that I can't call it Freddy's footlong or twenty three point some centimeter subs. That doesn't work. Yeah. Call it Freddy's footlong or 23 point some centimeter subs. That doesn't work. Yeah. And the next number is probably the wildest case of this Canadian change impacting things.

The next number is 61. 61 is how many passengers were on board an Air Canada flight in 1983 that ran out of fuel due to a mix-up with this. They all survive, but there was a plane full of people flying in July 1983 from Montreal to Edmonton. And basically halfway there, they ran out of fuel. And later it was discovered that the reason is Canada was still moving to metric in 1983. And this was a Boeing plane that was one of their first ones using kilograms for the weight of fuel. And the ground crew, the computers before the flight weren't working. So they were like hand calculating the fuel by weight.

And they accidentally mixed up pounds per liter versus kilograms per liter and only put in like half the fuel necessary for the flight. So how they like made an emergency landing? Yeah, I guess. And so then they're fine. The Boeing 767 aircrafts, it runs out of fuel over Ontario and they successfully land at an airstrip in the town of Gimli, Manitoba.

Gimli is it's spelled exactly like the Lord of the Rings dwarf Gimli, Manitoba. Gimli is, it's spelled exactly like the Lord of the Rings dwarf Gimli. I don't know why, but this plane gets nicknamed the Gimli glider because it glided to land safely. I see. I see. So everyone was fine. So I can, I can joke about how I suffered basically the same thing when I ran out of fuel because I only got 100 grams of pasta. Of pasta? And when did you notice because you started beeping? Like when you were in? Yeah.

Yeah. My little low on fuel meters, all the little meters and stuff that when you like, you know, just lit up. little meters and stuff that when you like, you know, just lit up my, my eyeballs, like, like turned into the little like gauges and you can see the needles going to empty on my eyeballs, just like in cartoons. Yeah. Anyways. Uh, but they all lived. That's good. I'm happy to hear that. Yeah. And the, the last number here is how this can happen within a country and without a country trying to switch. Because the last number is $125 million US. And 125... How much money I get right now for being here. You've done enough pasta company buzz marketing that you now receive that money yeah

big pasta i'm in the pocket of big pasta some steam coming out of my ears as the pasta money gauge goes up yeah it reaches al dente i'm on the uh so 125 million dollars that was the cost of a NASA mission called the Mars Climate Orbiter. And bad news, we lost it because of measurement stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I was wondering if you'd bring that up. Uh, was it, it was like a conversion error from either metric to Imperial or vice versa, right? either metric to Imperial or vice versa, right? Yeah, this launched in 1998.

And as early as around 1990, NASA had moved to metric. But according to CNN, NASA was collaborating with Lockheed Martin, an American defense contractor that was proudly still using U.S. customary units based on Imperial units. And so in September 1999, the orbiter reaches Mars, they fire the rockets to put it in orbit. NASA later described this as an end to end process problem, because just lots of people had to miss this at Lockheed and at NASA and everything else. But basically, because of that unit error, they fired the probe way too close to Mars and it either burned up in the atmosphere or ended up in outer space from there. This is just like the unit error I made when ordering, uh, when ordering a cover

for my couch. So my dog doesn't mess it up. I'm sorry. I really try. I'm trying to like find common ground with NASA and Lockheed Martin, and I'm struggling to do so. Yeah, it's just a bummer. And they have since not made this kind of mistake. But but that can happen. Like like the U.S. has not moved to metric. But I did grow up thinking of metric as like a science system. Like we used it in science class and that's it right and so in that space this can happen you'd think that like i don't know they'd have like a scrum or a meeting just to establish what unit of measurement they're all using you know like like hey everybody let's crisscross applesauce discuss what, what units of measurement we're using for this, like $125 million space thing. You, and you would, you would think even without that meeting, somebody would see the numbers

on a piece of paper or a screen and be like, that's just seems off. Like, yeah, it's, it's really mind boggling that this would happen with all the people involved in it. Yeah. But, you know, maybe, I mean, you know, the more, the more people you have involved, the more of a game of telephone it is, the more like someone's measuring it in terms of hands. And one person's like saying this, this, uh, fuselage needs to be 5,000 barley corns long. And you know, it just gets confusing. Ah, We shouldn't have hired the King of England to be on the team.

That was a mistake. Not Queen Elizabeth, an old King of England who died. That was a poor hiring choice. Yeah. Well, there's one takeaway for the main episode, and it's pretty quick, too, but I think this will kind of bring the world together. Takeaway number one out of one.

The modern UK and US use the metric system version of imperial units. Wait. The short version of this idea is that very quietly, both of those countries made the standard that all their imperial and customary units are based on they just switched that to metric ah so in a in a broad global sense we are all using metric even if we think we're not i'm confused sources for this really helped me understand it because this is kind of going back to that idea of there being standards for distances like the meter was based on a measurement of the earth and a hand being based on an adult male hand like every measurement is pegged to something right every measurement is based on something in the world and the u.s and uk changed their

measurements to be based on metric even though we still use feet and inches and stuff. Okay, but why didn't we just change it to be metric then? People don't want to. But they, yeah, we've officially abandoned whatever the standard was before. Yeah, we're done with it. We don't want to. Nah. Yeah, it turns out one of the main sources for this is the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is part of the main sources for this is the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology,

which is part of the Department of Commerce. And also the YouTube channel Veritasium did an interview with someone there. And then also Ashish Velkar of the University of Manchester is the other source. The metric system has become much more solidly based on standards. We already had the meter based on the size of the Earth and everything. It turns out that in the 1960s, they tried to find a lot of even more universal standards for metric. And since the 1960s, the metric meter has not been based on the Earth. It's been based on a measurement of the speed of light in a vacuum. Oh, all right. Which is really cool.

That's something we can all relate to but uh more than more than barley corn so like when we so we re we adjusted imperial to have used metric as like a sort of a like standard of of imperial so do we like take everyone's rulers away and replace them with slightly different rulers how does that even work so the british law for this was 1995 like before 1995 you had imperial units that were officially based on just old previous standards and then in 1995 they put out new legislation that'll link that ties every Imperial unit to just a metric amount. So we can still use Imperial units, but technically, fundamentally, we are using just a re-skinned version of metric units.

They just changed the code in the video game, so it's wearing a different costume. So an inch is officially 2.54 centimeters the imperial unit one stone is 6.35 blah blah blah kilograms they gave up on any standard beyond metric and metric is the one with the like universal standards cool practical very good so we're basically just like cosplaying, entire country cosplaying is like having a different unit of measurement. Yeah. Like when British people are proud about their pints, which we'll talk about in the bonus, they're officially, like officially, according to the rules, they're being proud about 0.56826125 liters. That's really what they're being proud about 0.56826125 liters that's really what they're drinking that's a good that's a that that's that's a number i really makes me want to go to the pub you know

yeah and then in the united states uh like veritasium's channel they go to this government institute where they have objects that are the official basis of a kilogram. Like it's a little metal weight that is supposed to be the, the, where we get all kilograms from. Wow. And since then they've tried to find more universal measures, but it turns out, even though the U S we think we're doing our own thing back in 1875, the U S was one of 40 countries to sign what's called the Treaty of the Meter, which made SI units the global standard. That's the French acronym for international system. That's what metric is tied to. And then in the 20th century, all the American

customary units also got pegged to SI units that match metric units. So we are also officially just re-skinning metric here. Right. So it's like, it's kind of a fake rebellion kind of thing where we like the aesthetic of rebelling against the global system, but we're not really. Yeah, we just like are insisting on thinking a particular way. But the US and UK have abandoned a difference from metric. It's just like, according to the rules and the science and the law, it's all just tied to that. It's just incredibly difficult to remember if you're trying to convert things as a person. So that's great. as a person. So that's great. Yeah. Right. And they're all like retaining the kind of length that the Imperial units were. So they don't line up with metric units. They're all really weird, long decimals to convert. Yeah. Yeah. No, I love nothing more than to have to memorize weird decimal numbers. That's like, that was my favorite part of school. Just like here's a weird long decimal number. You should know.

It's like great. My human brain was totally designed for this sort of task. That's on all your report cards in school. It just says like Katie keeps describing her brain as designed and we really appreciate it. She gets a check plus for brain design expression. I do remember once in elementary school I was crying and I didn't know why I was crying. And I was like, my face is sad, but my brain is OK. Oh, so elevated.

It's good. Good understanding of mental health. Wow. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Katie Golden for bringing the joy of pasta into this topic. Pasta is just really good. It's the best. Anyway, I said that's the main episode

because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on Patreon.com, patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the strange relationship between Brexit and imperial units, which is a pretty political bonus show, I'll just say. I'm not obligated to say, but I

will say, and I think it's an amazing thing to talk about. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of almost nine dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring Imperial Units of Measurement with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaway. Because takeaway number one, and I hope this was understandable, the modern UK and US use a metric system version of imperial units. It's all secretly metric. And then beyond that takeaway, what a run of stats and numbers. The all-time biggest one on the podcast so far got into everything from the history of imperial units to an emergency Canadian plane landing to the loss of a Mars orbiter to the independence of the country of India. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guest. She's great. I hope you truly dot dot dot set up, set up, set up,

fathom. There's a unit. I hope you fathom the awesomeness of Katie Golden's podcasting and writing. Her podcast is called Creature Feature. It's on iHeartRadio. It is about animals and the way humans are like animals and a bunch of other things too. It's just very funny and very informative. And if you like this podcast at all, you are going to love Creature Feature. Check it out if you haven't already. Also follow the Some More News channel on YouTube. Follow the at ProBirdWrites Twitter account and follow Katie Golden on Twitter. She's at Katie Golden, that's spelled G-O-L-D-I-N. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. A lot of particularly strong BBC information this week, in particular an interview with

Northwestern University historian Ken Adler. Also, an amazing piece for theconversation.com written by Ashish Velkar, who is a senior lecturer in economic history at the University of Manchester. Also used the book Measure for Measure by science writer Alex Hebra and further modern coverage of stuff from sources like Canada's Globe and Mail, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show.

And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.