MEASURING CHANGES
This is not a history column per se, but here’s a question for those of you who have been around for a while: when did Australia adopt the metric system? If your answer was around the 1970s, you'd be correct — mostly.
Australia legally adopted the metric system way back in 1947, signing the Metre Convention, known in French as the Convention du Mètre. This was driven in part by the desire for some conformity both on economical and practical bases in the post-WWII world. Imagine, for instance, being an aircraft mechanic at a
