G'day Joe,
You'll find an answer to the paper size question in the 10x faster thread (which I hadn't seen for a few days - haven't been able to connect).

We went metric in the early 70s, before that we used the Imperial system which is almost the same as yours except for minor differences such as the size of the ton.

We changed to dollars & cents on 14/2/1966, leaving behind the old pounds, shillings & pence, and in the process lost some good slang.

And by the way that should be "metre"!!!!!!!!!!

Cheers,
Alan