Just at the time the Canadian Standard shifted to metric, with the 
millimetre declared the legal basic value for dimensioning to avoid any need 
for decimal points that might be mistaken for dust spots on prints (or vice 
versa), the architectural firm I was with was doing a college campus.   We 
were all wrestling our minds into metric, including the foreman who called 
at 9 am on the first day of layout on the building site asking what the hell 
the number on the plan for the length of the first building meant - 
11,347,569 !?!?!?!?    We were simply working to the new standard set by the 
government, the millimetre.    A couple of weeks later, an architect 
recently arrived from Egypt joined the firm, his desk straight across from 
mine.   He thought we were all absolutely nuts, and didn't hesitate to tell 
us so in Mediterranean/Arabian style.   He said that in Egypt the basic 
design and building standard was the centimetre.   No one cared about 
anything less, it just took care of itself, and that the rest of the world 
operated that way too.   He thought the Canadians simply were too anal. 
"Who Cares!", he declared, hating to have to detail to millimetres.   He 
left a month later, taking his stinking little brown Egyptian endless chain 
smoking cigarettes with him, Allah be Praised.

cp in millimetre bc 

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