When is a Stone not a Stone, and Why?

[Steve]

Thanks again Geoff for being our resident expert in all things British.

Just out of curiosity I went to the Argos website and looked as scales

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/8303572/Trail/searchtext>SCALE.htm

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/8321798.htm

Darned if they don't all read out in Stone. But, it would seem you would have to give your weight in fractions of a Stone like 1.5 Stone or 1.25 Stone. ...or not. 

I just find it odd that people would still used such an odd and large unit of measurement. Of course, I suppose it is no more odd that 12 inches foot or 36 inches in a yard. Still it seems such a large unit, 14 pounds. What could be reasonably and practically measured in such a large unit? 

There was a big push in the USA to switch to metric, though that was well over a decade ago. They were going to convert road signs to Kilometers. The people raised such a holy stink they were forced to back down. 

I tried to convince people that is was no big deal. For example, if you were going to make a coffee table and you wanted it 'this' long by 'that' wide, you just measured in a mm or cm instead of inches. It didn't matter so much what the numbers were, as long as it ended up the size you wanted.

Sadly, no one was buying it. They accused the government of trying to cramp the metric system down our throats. 

The only concession was that most scientist converted to metric, but the population resisted tooth and nail. Oh yeah, and you can no longer buy soda in quarts or liquor in 'fifths'. It is all in liters now. 

In the end, if I had known that the typical bathroom scale read out in Stone, it would have made a lot more sense. 

Steve/bboyminn