...and drawbacks

Further to the correspondence for retaining imperial (Letters, 14 March) I would like to put the case for metric.

I remember imperial measurements with fondness. They are intuitive to a degree, and certainly our funny systems of weights and measures gave us an edge in mental arithmetic.

But we've moved on and the calculator has done away with the need for that. I, too, had to live through learning imperial, cgs, MKS and then SI units — and I wouldn't revert.

Does anyone really want to go back to links (7.92in) and poles (66ft, or 18ft in woodland measure, 21ft in Plantation measure, 24ft in Cheshire or 24.7065yds in Scotland)?

Does anyone even remember what a Slug is? (It's the mass in which a force of 1lb produces acceleration of 1ft/sec/sec). And wasn't it difficult to compare the value of a 14oz jar of jam at 4s 33/4d with a 1lb jar at 4s 9d?

And that's just a start. What about the Centigrade in Germany (1/100th of a degree of rotation isn't very warm)? And just try converting volumetric measures: one gallon = 6.22883 cu ft.

I could go on about the impracticalities, but wouldn't we find life difficult today if the world had stuck with Roman numerals?

Brian Hammond
Lichfield, Staffs