The Metric System.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume IV, Issue 300, 27 December 1902, Page 4

The Metric System.

1 »«*•«»* towards' the adoption in England of the metric system in place of the present clumsy system of reckoning weights and measures. The question was fully considered from every possible point of view as long ago as 1895, when a Parliamentary Committee, specially appointed to go into the matter, recommended that the metrical system be at once legalised for all purposes, and that, after a lapse of two years, the system be rendered compulsory by Act of Parliament. At the recent Conference of Colonial Premiers a resolution passed strongly favouring the adoption of the new system, and now the Decimal Association has decided to ask the Government, early next session, to introduce a Bill to give effect to # the recommendations of the Committee and to the resolutions of the Conference. In the meantime every effort is to be made in furtherance of the movement. The advantages of the metric system over our pnsse'nt method of computation have been otten pointed out. It is .obviously more natural, as every man possesses ten ready reckoners in his fingers and thumbs. It is infinitely simpler, and under,its operation multiplication is ( no longer vexation. Already it/is used by nearly all the leading countries of the world, and Great Bi|tain’s obstinate retention of and less widelyusocl is, without doubt, a ?cr.ou^isud vanfcage to her foreign ;,u- vT, Germany, Norway and Switzerland, Italy, and European countries, /compulsorily made the without experiencing any *P^r nience vvorth s P ea kingof. rV * yocess. In England many itrrtN /nd protective associations HAW, S y m p at hy W |th the moveIjii :"T an( l n °t one has opposed it. &HB|i ma * c °i Q age, of course, would jUkroity follow the adoption of the l&Tsygtem with regard to weights with the sovereign ■Me unit or standard. The chief 1 Jpation from our present system j|uld be in regard to the copper linage. Each florin would be rfvided into ten parts, called cents, nd ouch of these into ten fifths-of-■penny. The Americans already ave a decimal coinage, and there stated to be every prospect of a ill passing in the House of Comioua next session, rendering the iet(" ’" " " aif ft