The Thames Star. Resurrexi. SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 1901. DECIMAL SYSTEM.

Thames Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 9906, 30 March 1901, Page 2

The Thames Star. Resurrexi. SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 1901. DECIMAL SYSTEM.

For half a century efforts have been made to induce Great Britain to adopi the decimal system of coinage. Learned men have written books in support of the proposal, and member* oj: Parliament have hud the subject discussed in the House of Commons. In these discussions party lines have been forgotten and scientists and leaders, such as Mr Balfour, have argued pro and cou and yet no practical result has followed. The supporters of the system may fairly be said to be in a majority, and at one time it was thought the day was gained for the florin or. 2s piece, a tenth of the pound, was issued. Still the general adoption of the system is apparently a& far off as ever, it is doubtless owing to that Conservative spirit, inherent in the' Britisfi against any change in habits and customs which have been in use for centuries. A telegram from Wellington says at the annual meeting of the Chamber of Commerce the President referred to the recent agitation in England, and the resolution carried at the Conference of Chambers of Commerce urging on the Imperial Government the desirability of legalising the metric system of weight and measures. He suggested that the Wellington Chamber should press on the Government the desirability of the introduction of the system in New Zealand. It would be quite in keeping with the characteristics of the people of this colony, who delight in change and experimental legislation, the very opposite in that respect to the English people, to introduce the metric system, and we shall not be surprised to find before many years the Hon. Mr Ward taking the subject in hand. The Southland Times dealing with the question- Says: It would be more worthy of us to^have a rational and symmetrical system instead of tlie unmethodical patchwork that has drifted down to us from the past, taking shape almost at random and without order or unity. Anomalies and absurdities become apparently natural and proper by long use. We buy and sell gold by the ounce, but the sovereign is not an aliquot part of the ounce or pound. A pound of gold also is very different in weight from a pound of sugar. An ounce from the chemist's shop is not the same weight as an ounce from the grocer's. A ton of flour with us is not the same weight as a ton of coals. A mile by the road is not The same length as a mile by sea- And then we employ quite a number of different units, such as a yard, a fathom, a chain, a knot. But these are mere trifles, and hardly worth counting in practice, compared with the cumbrousness of the divisions and Bubdivisions of the mile and the acre, for example. In ,1826, the yard, the pound weight, and the gallon, were fixed by Act of Parliament as our standard units. But the gallon is not a multiple of the cubic inch nor an aliquot part of the cubic foot. The pound weight is the tentli part of a gallon of water, but it is not evenly related to any lineal or cubical measure. Our yard measure can be verified by reference to the length of the pendulum that beats .^seconds in tbJ2< latitude of London, which is 39,139 inches. That might have been taken as our lineal unit. It is very nearly the same as the French metre, which is 39.37 inches, The metrical system, assuming that basis, is very simple and complete. Everything is referred to the metre. The cube of the tenth part of it is the litre, the unit of capacity, and the weight of that much of water of a certain temperature is practically the unit of weight and is called the gramme. The chief excellence of the system, however, consists in rendering the divisions, and multiples of these on the decimal basis, which does away at once with the use of compound rules. Anyone that understands anything of arithmetic can perceive the immense advantage of this. The, French have the start of us here. A good many of the nations of Europe have already "adopted the. same system: Spain,. Portugal, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Sweden, and Norway. From its simplicity and convenient it is very likely to become universal.