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by Symbiote 1382 days ago
You can find occasional uses in many countries. TV screens are advertised in inches here in Denmark, although I noticed the last one I bought was "34 inch, 86.00cm" in the detailed specification -- the inches were just marketing. Old water pipes have some sort of pre-metric size.

Several countries (e.g. France) use the word pound (livre) to mean 500g, which could confuse visitors into thinking something non-metric is being used. I noticed that in south America.

3 comments

Water piping is still specified in inches, at least in Italy.

Also in Italy, when dealing with agricolture, forestry, and related services, non-SI surface units are still commonly used, at leat in the north:

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pertica_(unit%C3%A0_di_misura)...

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giornata_piemontese

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campo_(unit%C3%A0_di_misura)

No one really does it any more, but "half-pound" (halvt pund) in Danish means 250g, which was the common way of ordering butter before the supermarkets took over (and why butter used[0] to come in packages of 250g). Similarly, in Sweden, one mile is 10 km.

[0] These days, and selling butter in 200g packages to keep the prices seemingly low.

> [0] These days, and selling butter in 200g packages to keep the prices seemingly low.

And that's why i do my shopping now based on €/kg. There are some very telling differences between even the same manufacturer: last thing i was looking at was gin [the drink] € per litre. Just a visually minor difference in bottle size was a substantial difference in a) cost and perceived value and b) cost and actual value.

> Several countries (e.g. France) use the word pound (livre) to mean 500g

Note that nobody I know below the age of 70 uses the "livre" unit in France. It's something you see pretty much only in old recipes

Cereal production is still expressed in “quintal/hectare” with quintal keeping its old meaning of 100 livres but using the metric ones so 100kg.