Imperial units
The modern UK legislation defining the imperial system of units is given in the Weights and Measures Act 1985 (as amended).
[5] The 1824 act allowed the continued use of pre-imperial units provided that they were customary, widely known, and clearly marked with imperial equivalents.
The three colleges published, at infrequent intervals, pharmacopoeias, the London and Dublin editions having the force of law.
[11] The Medical Act 1858 transferred to the Crown the right to publish the official pharmacopoeia and to regulate apothecaries' weights and measures.
The 1824 act defined as the volume of a gallon to be that of 10 pounds (4.54 kg) of distilled water weighed in air with brass weights with the barometer standing at 30 inches of mercury (102 kPa) at a temperature of 62 °F (17 °C).
For the yard, the length of a pendulum beating seconds at the latitude of Greenwich at Mean Sea Level in vacuo was defined as 39.01393 inches.
Since the Weights and Measures Act 1985, British law defines base imperial units in terms of their metric equivalent.
Some British people still use one or more imperial units in everyday life for distance (miles, yards, feet, and inches) and some types of volume measurement (especially milk and beer in pints; rarely for canned or bottled soft drinks, or petrol).
[43] Government documents aimed at the public may give body weight and height in imperial units as well as in metric.
[46] As in other English-speaking countries, including Australia, Canada and the United States, the height of horses is usually measured in hands, standardised to 4 inches (102 mm).
Display sizes for screens on television sets and computer monitors are always diagonally measured in inches.
[51] In Standard Indian English, as in Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, Singaporean, and British English, metric units such as the litre, metre, and tonne utilise the traditional spellings brought over from French, which differ from those used in the United States and the Philippines.
[51] Hong Kong has three main systems of units of measurement in current use: In 1976 the Hong Kong Government started the conversion to the metric system, and as of 2012 measurements for government purposes, such as road signs, are almost always in metric units.
The Chinese system's most commonly used units for length are 里 (lei5), 丈 (zoeng6), 尺 (cek3), 寸 (cyun3), 分 (fan1) in descending scale order.
The most commonly used units are the mile or "li" (哩, li1), the yard or "ma" (碼, maa5), the foot or "chek" (呎, cek3), and the inch or "tsun" (吋, cyun3).
The traditional measure of flat area is the square foot (方呎, 平方呎, fong1 cek3, ping4 fong1 cek3) of the imperial system, which is still in common use for real estate purposes.
For the measurement of volume, Hong Kong officially uses the metric system, though the gallon (加侖, gaa1 leon4-2) is also occasionally used.
In the 1980s, momentum to fully convert to the metric system stalled when the government of Brian Mulroney was elected.
[citation needed] Newborns are measured in SI at hospitals, but the birth weight and length is also announced to family and friends in imperial units.
Drivers' licences use SI units, though many English-speaking Canadians give their height and weight in imperial.
In the manufacture of ammunition, bullet and powder weights are expressed in terms of grains for both metric and imperial cartridges.
The influence of British and American culture in Australia has been noted to be a cause for residual use of imperial units of measure.
[69] Aviation was exempt, with altitude and airport elevation continuing to be measured in feet whilst navigation is done in nautical miles; all other aspects (fuel quantity, aircraft weight, runway length, etc.)
Screen sizes for devices such as televisions, monitors and phones, and wheel rim sizes for vehicles, are stated in inches, as is the convention in the rest of the world - and a 1992 study found a continued use of imperial units for birth weight and human height alongside metric units.
The imperial system remains in limited use – for sales of beer in pubs (traditionally sold by the pint).
[77] The Burmese government set a goal to metricate by 2019, which was not met, with the help of the German National Metrology Institute.
[78] Some imperial measurements remain in limited use in Malaysia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and South Africa.
Measurements in feet and inches, especially for a person's height, are frequently encountered in conversation and non-governmental publications.
Petrol is still sold by the imperial gallon in Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Myanmar, the Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St Kitts and Nevis and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
(270 / 3) specifying that, from 1 January 2010, the new unit sale price for petrol will be the litre and not the gallon, which was in line with the UAE Cabinet Decision No.
