There are many consumers still to be convinced that the change to the metric system is absolutely necessary. For their benefit I reproduce excerpts from an article published in the Guyana Consumers Association Newsletter WHY? in April 1971. Here it is -

Going Metric
We already trade with countries that are metric, and a significant proportion of the remainder of our commerce is done with Britain and with other countries that are either in the process of going metric or are planning to do so.

Explanation:
Some people may not be quite sure about what the metric system is. It is a simple system of weights and measures based on the metre, which was originally calculated as one ten-millionth part of the distance from the north pole to the equator passing through Paris. It involves the use of a decimal system of measurement, and was first introduced in France by Napoleon.

Under this system there are six basic units. The three following units with a few of their multiples and sub-multiples provide the measures that will be most generally encountered in everyday life:

Cookery:
The change over to the metric system will not only affect merchants and traders, with our country's increasing, political and economic ties with Latin American and non-English-speaking Caribbean countries, but housewives will also be affected.

Recipes, scales, measures, and cooking vessels will be increasingly produced according to metric measurements and quantities. Information about metric cookery will have to be introduced in schools and other institutions of Home Economics. There will be need for education about conversion of imperial based recipes to metric quantities. The sooner this is begun the better and more painless will be the change. The words "kilo" and "litre" should present no difficulty to the housewife or home-economics student.

Advantages of the system: The main advantages of the system are its simplicity, its comprehensiveness and its universality as compared with our present imperial system. Practically any quantity used in everyday life, in science, engineering, technology, industry, commerce, can be expressed as a decimal system of units that is understood all over the world. The introduction of the system will facilitate trade.

It will reduce cost and waste of time and materials since there will no longer have to be two production lines run by firms, one in imperial units and the other in metric units.

The system can be used by all nations and it is already internationally recognised as being one that is accurate and easily defined and therefore generally acceptable.

Conclusion:
It is inevitable that there will soon have to be, in Guyana, a change from the present imperial system to the metric system. We have discussed its simplicity and the advantages to be gained especially where trade with countries that are metric, or are going metric, is concerned.

There only remains for me to emphasise the need for programmes of education at all levels to be started as early as possible. It has been estimated, for example, that more than a year's learning time in mathematics will be saved by the replacement of the imperial system by metric units. Let us prepare ourselves now for change that will lead to increased efficiency and benefit to the economy as a whole. Let us go metric.

Length:
Kilometre (km) ................- 1000 metres (m) ......- 5/8 of 1 mile
Metre (m) .. ..... .... ........ .- ................................- 39.37 inches
Centimetre (cm) .... ....... ..- 1/100 metre, .... ......(21/2 cm - about 1 inch)
Millimetre (mm) ............ .....................................- 1/1000 metre

Weight or Mass:
Kilogramme (Kg) ....... ....-1000 gramms (g) .. ...- 2 1/5 lb
Gramme (g) . . ....... ........- (28g - about 1 oz)