Most countries today use the metric system. Liberia, Myanmar, and the United States remain the primary holdouts. Australia used to be among them, but it boldly made the switch fifty long years ago. 1974 was a big year for the transport authorities in particular, as they worked to flip the nation from miles to kilometers.
As highlighted by Transport for NSW, the conversion required a great deal of work. The most obvious challenge was in manufacturing and labor. Signs across the nation had to be changed to reflect the new kilometer-based speed limits. But more than that, the population had to be educated about the changes, too.
So how do you get the word out to 6 million drivers across the country? You do what governments do best—you make some adverts, print some brochures, and run a big public information campaign!
This was a very real safety issue. If drivers confused the new kilometer speed limits for miles per hour, they’d be going way too fast. For example, if a driver did 100 mph in a 100 km/h zone, they’d be absolutely flying along at 60 km/h (37 mph) over the limit!
As recorded by the National Film & Sound Archive (NFSA), July 1, 1974 was the big day for Australia’s metric switchover—”M Day.” Authorities prepared by installing thousands of new signs, with over 16,500 installed in New South Wales alone. Many were installed ahead of time and left covered, to be revealed almost immediately once the switch was official. Overall, the full switchover was handled within the month of July.
To help avoid confusion, the switch to metric came with a switch to a new style of signage. Gone were the “SPEED LIMIT” signs that aped the American style. In their place were the new signs, which put the speed in kilometers inside a red circle.
Distance and advisory speed signs changed too. The former had temporary “km” markers installed until 1976 or so, so drivers would realize the signs had been updated. The latter featured the “km/h” units in their design.
In the years leading up to “M Day,” Australian market vehicles started featuring dual-marked speedometers. Drivers weren’t required to change the speedometers in older cars, though they were strongly encouraged to do something.
If you couldn’t find a decal to suit your vehicle, ads and brochures were out there to help you memorize the basic conversions. 60 km/h was the prevailing urban speed limit, roughly equal to the former limit of 35 mph, and 80 km/h was close enough to 50mph. Meanwhile, rural 60 mph limits were now 100 km/h. There were fewer different speed limits in 1974, and speed enforcement was far rarer. Remembering the major conversions in your head was good enough to get by.
By most accounts, the transition was a smooth one. “I was on my provisional license in 1974 and wasn’t too long out of school,’ Barbara K told the NFSA. She was 21 at the time. “By that time, we already had a bit of experience with using the metric system, so I understood it.” Between advertisements across television and radio and newspaper articles explaining the changes, the country got on board in short order.
Switching speed limits was just one part of Australia’s conversion to the metric system. There were so many other changes besides, all under the purview of the Metric Conversion Board. Still, as far as government programs go, it was a remarkably successful one. Indeed, news coverage in many cases was barely a ripple as the government and public simply got on with the job. One article from October 1974 noted that “metric conversion in Australia was well past the point of no return,” barely exceeding an inch of column space in the Canberra Times. In 1981, the job was considered done, and the Board was dissolved just 11 years after it was founded.
Today, you won’t find too many Australians hearkening for a return to the days of miles, gallons, and horsepower. The country embraced the kilometer, liter, and kilowatt with vigor. Some holdouts remain—we still sell tires and TVs in inches, and still measure humans in feet, after all. But by and large, the metric system reigns supreme Down Under to this day.
Image credits: The Metric Conversion Board of Australia, National Film and Sound Archive, State of New South Wales (Transport for NSW), CC BY-SA 4.0, drewzelcat via YouTube screenshot
Late to this (on vacation) but here it is anyway. My first job out of college was with Boeing Aerospace, 1978. We were to build a French+German co-designed military product in the US. The drawings were metric. None of the fabrication tools (mills, lathes, etc.) were set up for metric values (except for the CNC machines). So many disscusions were held and it was decided to reproduce the drawings with metric and Imperial units in parentheses. The tool shop absolutely refused, so the drawings they produced were Imperial with metric in parentheses. Confusion abounded with at least a couple of tools made to the wrong scale. As a college-educated Manufactuing Engineer, I was comfortable with both. Fun, but confusing time in the shops.
Somewhat in the same vein…
If you have a couple of hours to kill, check out the 1960’s videos on the decimalization of currency for Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK on YouTube.
These are commercials the respective governments put out to educate the public on the transition from Pounds, Shillings and Pence to the system of 100 pennies = 1 pound (or dollar) that is used now.
It’s funny how I got to the end of this article and got completely blindsided by “You won’t find many Australians harkening for a return of the […] horsepower”. Welp, I guess Australia has out-metric’d even me.
I imagine the Australians made good use of the experience they had converting from the Australian pound to the decimalized ten-shilling-equivalent Australian dollar in 1966.
See, dear Americans, what a nation can do when they don’t pretend that measurement units represent a political identity.
They also fixed their gun laws in similar manner. Government buys back all handguns and assault weapons with quite premium, no questions asked. Would fix the situation in US too in a heartbeat. Hard to imagine situation where first people would jumping on this wouldn’t be the crackheads and other problem cases
I think a gun buyback might bankrupt the US government. They have 300 million guns. A normal gun costs between $400 and $1000. They can go much higher. Assuming they give out $1000 per gun that is $300 billion dollars. I live in Canada now but grew up in the rural US. I do miss being able to go out back of the house and shoot some clay pigeons without any hassle.
I would claim that it would be worth the financial cost. Also I would claim that quite big *portition would not be purchased back. And it would just cost less than your average small war. With quite close to home benefits.
*I assume there’s lot of hunting weapons too.
How do we defend ourselves when the evil people obtain the guns through the black market? Germans learnt the harsh lessons in 2016 that the strictest gun control laws do little. A young German-Iranian man in Munich killed the eight innocent people and injuried many more easily in the shopping mall, restaurant, and big box electronic store.
How do we defend ourselves and our properties when the police cannot come to your aid quickly? Think of Texas and many states with wide open space. It can take up to 20–60 minutes for the police officers to arrive. There are many instances where the concealed gun laws work: the would-be killers were teed off quickly by the law-abiding citizens with concealed gun. Not only in Texas but also in Brazil, too.
Of course, the mainstream media doesn’t tell you that the average death rate by gun in Chicago is 20-50 per weekend despite Chicago having one of the strictest gun control laws in the US.
The Second Amendment is there for a reason: to protect ourselves and our properties however the ways we can do.
It’s true, Australia is a small and densely populated nation whereby there is always someone available to help within spitting distance.
Much like embroiling yourself in the black market, whilst paying extortionate rates for firearms is the same as buying one at your local Walmart.
Yes, surely the amount of shootings in our side of the pond are as bad and things as dangerous due expensive black market guns. I mean every bad guy surely can afford to pay thousands for handgun.
Oh you Americans make everyone else laugh when you spout tripe like this.
There was a mass shooting in Germany in 2016! These thing never happen in the US because of all the good guys with guns.
“If guns are illegal then only criminals will have guns” is an old line, and presumably must have sounded convincing to someone at some point, but doesn’t hold up when you look at countries like Australia, the UK, Germany etc. which have many restrictions on owning guns.
Mostly because it’s really expensive (and difficult) for a criminal to get hold of an illegal gun, (and will attract a lot more police attention if they use it). It’s just not worth it for a mugger to spend (eg) £1000 to get hold of a gun, in order to try and mug someone for a £100 phone.
I lived in a studio apartment in Balmain, Sydney in the late 00s. The oven in there was so old that it was in fahenheit only. The model of it was ‘New World 59′ and I’m pretty sure that ’59’ was the year it was new. I didn’t cook anything in it for fear of tetanus.
Before I moved there I had a ’65 Mini Van with a speedo in mph and just memorised the conversions in this article. Well, I memorised up to 50 = 80. It ran out of gearing any higher than that.
“One article from October 1974 noted that “metric conversion in Australia was well past the point of no return,” barely exceeding an inch of column space in the Canberra Times. “
Hey editor, should this read “barely exceeding 2.54 centimeters of column space…”?
So, how would metric distances work in the US, given that freeways are designed around the mile?
New signs, new km markers, new exit numbers.
Except the fact that exits are mostly spaced 1 mile apart
So, the exit numbers change, and maybe we get some extra exits A,B,C etc
It’s really not a big issue.
Exactly, why bother either way.
Metric vs Imperial Units: How NASA lost a 327 Million Dollar Mission to Mars
https://everydayastronaut.com/mars-climate-orbiter/
Look up the Gimli Glider for more conversion failure shlts and giggles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider
“We still measure humans in feet”
Shouldn’t it generally be two, with rare exceptions? I thought that was the factory setting for most of us.
Calling Miss Mercedes…
The aerospace industry is one of the few that has standardized on imperial measurements, to a degree. Even Airbus measures airplanes in inches, and getting the French to do something like that is harder than getting a redneck to wear a beret.
That’s not been my experience in aerospace at all. I primary see metric drawings and most specifications are metric as well (kW, N-m, m/s, etc).
The high-tech industry is a hilarious mix of imperial and metric as most fab equipment is designed in the US, but most fabs are in Asian countries which are solidly metric. You end up with parts designed in inches and use ASTM threads (1/4-20, 10-32, etc), but have specification ratings that are all metric (L/m, m/s, mm, etc).
As an engineer, I solidly wish the US was metric, but at least working in industry for quite a while has made it fairly easy to convert common units in my head back and forth.
Individual aerospace parts might be a mix of units, depending on origin. However, LOPA (layout of passenger accommodations) aka the airplane’s floor plan, is in inches.