Quote:
Originally Posted by Taf
Oddly enough, France, home of the metric system still uses pints and pounds (pinte and livre).
"Gabriel Mouton, a church vicar in Lyons, France, is considered by many to be the founding father of the metric system. In 1670, Mouton proposed a decimal system of measurement that French scientists would spend years further refining."
"In 1812, Napoleon abandoned the metric system; although it was still taught in school, he largely let people use whichever measures they liked until it was reinstated in 1840. According to Dr Alder, “It took a span of roughly 100 years before almost all French people started using it.”"
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They still use the words pint and pound, but in a similar way to our use of tonne. It’s just a word, and these days it refers to a metric measure (500ml or 500g as the case may be). A metric tonne is 1,000kg, while an imperial (long) ton is 1,016kg.