why is the US not Metric

[tooki]

When all is said and done - isn't it really about priorities? 

For example, what should USA do first: implement universal health care similar to most other advanced economies, or switch over to the metric system?

If Sweden could get it done I gather the greatest country in the world should be able to manage.

Not sure why you chose Sweden specifically, but in a nutshell, it's because Sweden (like most countries) is smart enough to tax its people (especially the rich) enough to keep the government adequately funded. (And they're not pissing away billions on pointless military entanglements.) The US is currently starving its government to the point that even basic services are suffering. (12 year backlog of naturalization applications, IRS so defunded it can't perform audits on all but the biggest cases of tax evasion, but also is unable to adequately staff its call centers to provide citizen advice, police reliant on literal highway robbery for funding, etc.)

So in such an environment, a pointless switch to km on road signs is simply not going to happen, and rightly so I'd say.

[vk6zgo]

Just when I get to think you are fairly rational, you post abject "duck poo" like the above.
Mud huts, my backside!

Even the least developed Commonwealth countries had far more complex economies than you suggest.
Australia has been an independent nation since 1901, &  had its own manufacturing sector of the economy.
Yes, some stuff was imported, but much of our needs, including measuring equipment was locally made.

Well I went too far. But I didn't say Australia, exactly. Nor did I specify the year. There were plenty of tropical islands that were part of the commonwealth. Countries that are still 100% dependent on imports in order to have even building material for houses, cars, refrigerators, the whole nine yards. America also started out as a raw material factory for Britain. We all did.

But back to Australia, you mentioned a car industry? What company? Did Australia develop this industry independently? Or did a car company in another country help to build a plant in Australia?

Yes, GM, but they wouldn't do anything until the Aussie taxpayer ponied up a substantial share of the cost.

And, no, the gurus from the USA didn't bestow their advanced technology upon us awestruck savages, like unto Von Daniken's aliens.

Other companies joined in local manufacturing after the success of the Holden car.

That wasn't the first Australian designed & manufactured car, though, the Tarrant was the first, back in 1901, but couldn't compete with the massively subsidised offerings from the UK, & other countries.

 This is before metrication?

Yes, but the Germans, French & Italians quite happily produced Metric cars contemporary with the Tarrant, so Australians were familiar with Metric threads, etc, very early in the piece.

At the time of WWII, America was so self-sufficient it basically ignored the war until near the end. America had most all the raw materials, agriculture, and manufacturing tech it needed, and it was pretty content to watch the rest of the world kill each other.

I feel you do your great nation a disservice here----the USA may have been nominally "Neutral", but it leaned as far as it could in the direction of the Allies fighting against Nazi Germany.
The "Lendlease Act" of early 1941 allowed the US to supply military equipment to Britain, & ultimately the other allies.
Unfair to the Nazis?----who cares!
Once the USA joined the War, they were in "boots & all".

 Until Pearl Harbor, or something like that. I would think most of the rest of the former commonwealth did not have this situation. I thought they had economies that were more closely intertwined with their neighbors.

Not really, they were more intertwined with that of the UK.(welcome to "globalism" early 20th century style).
Because of this, we came to the aid of the "Mother Country", to the extent of, in Australia's case, leaving us dangerously vulnerable to Japan, with most of our troops overseas.

It is a "charming"  conceit of Brits to proclaim that they " Stood alone against Nazi Germany".
The Commonwealth countries might well say "what are we, chopped liver?"

Not trying to ruffle feathers, but I work with folks doing business in Australia. And they liken the retail marketplace to America 20 years ago.

That may be so, but it is also brutally competitive.
Some multinational retailers, have in the past, gone home "with their tail between their legs".

 As far as internet vs brick and mortar, anyway. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe it's good that your country isn't taken over by Amazon, yet.

Is my entire post completely assinine? I take some liberties, here and there. But I think there's something solid in there. I mean, the country that builds nuclear carriers and exports F16's might have a lot of internally developed manufacturing technology that doesn't necessarily depend on only mm's.

The thing is, you think we have some mystic belief in the wondrous power of the Metric system, but nobody except yourself & a few other 'Imperial" supporters has ever expressed that thought.
Of course you can make all sorts of stuff & do all sorts of stuff without Metric units.
They are just a tool, & in our opinions a superior one.

None of this was meant as an insult. There's no reason to reinvent the wheel. If it has already been done and perfected, it is easier to copy than to start all over. This is why most of the developed world has AC, refrigerators, cars, cable TV, internet. This is why we trade.

[KL27x]

Re:Tooki

And yet our government workers make significantly more than equivalent workers in the private sector. And in most cases they are essentially unable to be fired as long as they come to work on time.

Our military spending is huge, and making a $30 billion airplane might seem insane, but the bulk of this is paying peoples' salaries and pensions at the end of the day. It's not like we're taking $30 billion of resources and pouring it in a toilet to make one plane. It's feeding people who serve in the military and paying the contractors who are creating new technology. And at least the military services retain some ability to fire/discharge contractors and personnel.  It's reassuring that the plane/tech spending is so much of this; otherwise all this spending would be going to soldiers and bureacrats and putting boots on the ground? US military spending is how we will all get flying cars one day. This has been one of the US's main bags, since WW2. Military technology and what spins off of it.

;;;;;;;;;;

v6zgo:

The thing is, you think we have some mystic belief in the wondrous power of the Metric system, but nobody except yourself & a few other 'Imperial" supporters has ever expressed that thought.

Do you have bsfeechannel blocked? He thinks metric will improve the quality of our roads and make them cheaper to maintain. I'm not even sure how our roads will know when they're metric, but we await further details from the guru. Can the power of metric convince government workers to dissolve obsolete programs and to vote themselves a paycut?

Several "imperial supporters" (or defenders of logic) have spoken against rstopher. Silver Solder seems to have some sensible words regarding bsfeechannel's opinions, but yet bsfeechannel continues his antagonistic and vapid antics mostly unchecked. And then Scram drops in to add another derogatory and vapid comment. It's distracting to me, so don't take it personal if my tone sometimes feels a little harsh, and I stray a little off the course. 

Yes, GM, but they wouldn't do anything until the Aussie taxpayer ponied up a substantial share of the cost.
...
That wasn't the first Australian designed & manufactured car, though, the Tarrant was the first, back in 1901, but couldn't compete with the massively subsidised offerings from the UK, & other countries.

Honestly, I did not know the answer when I asked. The Tarrant is neat history. But I suspected there would have been a foreign car company building in Australia. The image in my head was Subaru. And I know that is only because I can still see Crocodile Dundee driving an Outback through the outback.

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
Payin' the devil his kilo of flesh.
Give 'em an millimeter, they take a kilometer.
The quality, here, is kilometers apart.
He centimetered his way forward in the dark.
Walk a K in my shoes, pal.
He summoned his last gram of strength but came up a millimeter short. (hmm, not bad)
Dude is just K's ahead of the competition.
This achievement is a true K-stone! Let's have some half kilo cake!
Like getting hit with a 5 kilo hammer! Or a tonne of bricks!
The kilometer high club.
This thing weighs a ton. I mean tonne. With the silent "e". No that's not just the brits adding random "e's" on the end of words. It rhymes with done, not run! Clear now?

Good luck on the mission to eradicate the english language.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inch
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mile
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ton
vs
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/centimeter   ;it's a unit of length!
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kilometer     ;ditto
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tonne           ;this one is mass!

[vk6zgo]

The cost to leave our road signs alone is minimal.   The cost to switch is enormous.   The benefits of switching are dubious.   So it doesn't get switched.   I recently came across the document at https://www.gao.gov/assets/230/221472.pdf which had an estimate of $754 million (754 megadollars) to switch state and local road signs to km in 1995.  This is nearly $1.3 billion in today's dollars.

Enormous? The US population in 1995 was 266.6 million so $2.87 per capita...
For comparison the same year the US spent $321.6 billion on the military or about $1,206 per capita.
The total national health expenditure that year was $1,022 billion or $3,833 per capita.
Add all the other public spending and that drop in the bucket becomes even more negligibly small.

It's not the cost that keeps the US from metricating the road signs, it is lack of will and that is totally understandable. It wouldn't really serve any purpose.

As you have pointed out, $1.3 billion does sound huge, but in context, is not at all that large.

In 2017, the new Perth Stadium was completed at a cost of $A1.6 billion.(at current exchange rates, that is approx US$1.09 billion.)
This was spent by a single State, with a population of around 2.7 million.

What are the benefits of a new stadium?
To sports, it is immeasurable, as it is for very large concerts by international performers, to most everybody else ---meh!
It could have been spent on other things, but it wasn't.

Unlike a stadium, replacing road signage in the USA could have been done over a decade or so, by the existing road maintenance crews, much as it was done in this country.

As I pointed out previously, they have 7 times our road mileage, but nearly 13 times our population.

[SilverSolder]

...
Now you've listened to my story
Here's the point that I have made
Cats were born to give chicks fever
Be it Fahrenheit or centigrade!
...

Elvis Presley.  Nuff said!

[bsfeechannel]

You are not doing this.

It's your time to do the homework.

The "why" other countries did this is not nearly the same situation that modern America is in.

Let's investigate that claim.

Because of modern education and the internet.

When the US was an "island", no one gave a rat's ass for their units. But now that the world is integrated, the US is in an awkward position with regard to their outdated standards.

Also because of the size of our road system.

I guess the world's road system is far greater than the US's. That was not a problem for metrication.
 

Also, because of the manufacturing and machining history of America,

The refusal to modernize their system of units goes invariably along with some reference to the past. Past, past, past.

It gives us the impression that the US is a nation of the past.

[bsfeechannel]

If you look at old schematics from Metric countries, nanofarads are noticeable for their absense.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What engineering practice?

bsfeechannel, earlier in the thread: "Is driving a car on a road not engineering?"

According to the dictionary, an engineer is, among other things, "a person who operates or is in charge of an engine".

When you drive a car, you are essentially operating an engine. So you're practicing engineering. And you even need a license to do it.

Conclusion, the imperial system is perfect for penny-pinching drivers, people without a degree in meteorology and frightened pilots.

Exactly!   Now you get it !!!!!

You see rstofer? I'm trying hard to redeem the respect you think the US deserves to no avail.

[CatalinaWOW]

I came across another example of how the US is being practical about conversion to metric while fiddling with one of my other hobbies.

High quality topographic maps of the US have been made available for more than 100 years from the USGS.  Obviously they started in traditional units.  And until the 1990s they were produced by largely manual methods.  Which basically means tediously going through surveys and stereographic aerial photographs drawing contour lines.  They were updated periodically by editing older maps.  Switching to metric units would have meant repeating all of that work.  I can't even imagine how many man hours would have been involved.  So it wasn't done when metric became the preferred system in 1974.  In roughly the 1990s a metric overlay was added to the maps so distances could be evaluated in both meters and miles.  But contour lines and the basic size of the maps remained traditional. 

Sometime in the 2000s the data in the maps was digitized and augmented by various overhead systems including radar from the Space Shuttle and airborne laser radars.  It become economical to redraw the maps with automated methods and current editions of these maps have the contour lines metric. 

You can go to the USGS website and literally view the maps over time and see these changes.

It is happening.  Too bad everyone is not happy with the pace.

[vk6zgo]

If you look at old schematics from Metric countries, nanofarads are noticeable for their absense.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Congratulations! you found one with nF..
Maybe I should amend my comment to say "many old schematics from Metric countries don't use nF".
I assume you did notice however, that they use both nF & decimal parts of a uF, as well as decimal parts of a M !

[/quote]

[KL27x]

According to the dictionary, an engineer is, among other things, "a person who operates or is in charge of an engine".

When you drive a car, you are essentially operating an engine. So you're practicing engineering. And you even need a license to do it.

You got me. I see what you did there. But I'll give you the bonus point jackpot if you can demonstrate why the many benefits of metric apply to this kind of engineering. Driving. Or flying a plane for that matter.

If you are the pilot, where are you shifting a decimal place? Where are you converting cubic meters into liters? Converting Kelvin into C? Mixing molar solutions?

I don't recall who said it, and I'm just paraphrasing. But there was the complaint that using feet for ATC is bad because vertical distance and horizontal distance are in different units. I won't go into it, but this isn't particularly compelling to me. It's done that way because it works a million times better. And it's the same way in metric. Maybe there is a better reason?

I mean, I can see this in a space ship. But considering the operating parameters of an airplane, it just makes sense to use a small unit for altitude and a large unit for horizontal distance. In metric, it just happens the large unit is 1000x the small one. You want to call it the same unit, but that's semantics. You use it like two different units. It's like adjusting the voltage knob on an O-scope. You're getting a different scale but the same information.

[Zero999]

According to the dictionary, an engineer is, among other things, "a person who operates or is in charge of an engine".

When you drive a car, you are essentially operating an engine. So you're practicing engineering. And you even need a license to do it.

This made me laugh. What a load of shit!  Keep the comedy gold coming. 

[Cubdriver]

According to the dictionary, an engineer is, among other things, "a person who operates or is in charge of an engine".

When you drive a car, you are essentially operating an engine. So you're practicing engineering. And you even need a license to do it.

This made me laugh. What a load of shit!  Keep the comedy gold coming. 

Yeah, he certainly dug deep and stretched for that one.  I still fail to see any benefit to metric vs inches and feet when I'm driving, though.

-Pat

[SiliconWizard]

According to the dictionary, an engineer is, among other things, "a person who operates or is in charge of an engine".

When you drive a car, you are essentially operating an engine. So you're practicing engineering. And you even need a license to do it.

This made me laugh. What a load of shit!  Keep the comedy gold coming. 

Ahah, well, this would be a pretty old definition, and completely irrelevant nowadays, but even so - back in the day, what it meant is basically someone who was REALLY in charge of an engine, in a train or boat for instance, in which engines required constant maintenance and care, and a fair bit of knowledge for doing so. A car driver is definitely NOT in charge of an engine in that sense anyway.
Not any more that you're in charge of the CPU when you're using a computer.

[Zero999]

According to the dictionary, an engineer is, among other things, "a person who operates or is in charge of an engine".

When you drive a car, you are essentially operating an engine. So you're practicing engineering. And you even need a license to do it.

This made me laugh. What a load of shit!  Keep the comedy gold coming. 

Ahah, well, this would be a pretty old definition, and completely irrelevant nowadays, but even so - back in the day, what it meant is basically someone who was REALLY in charge of an engine, in a train or boat for instance, in which engines required constant maintenance and care, and a fair bit of knowledge for doing so. A car driver is definitely NOT in charge of an engine in that sense anyway.
Not any more that you're in charge of the CPU when you're using a computer.

I suppose, in the old days operating a computer was a skilled job.

There are all sorts of archaic definitions of words which sound very silly by today's standards. For example do you know what a gay house is in old English? A brothel for straight men. An archaic definition of the word gay is engaging in risky or immoral behaviour.

[bsfeechannel]

It is happening.  Too bad everyone is not happy with the pace.

Now we're talking. The only sensible answer to the OP's question is: Yes we know about metrication and we're doing what we can to adapt. Just give us time.

End of discussion.

Responses like "we'll never metricate our road signs because we don't care" serve the US no purpose and make the country look like a land of morons.

[bsfeechannel]

I assume you did notice however, that they use both nF & decimal parts of a uF, as well as decimal parts of a M !

The filter caps are in µF, the "low frequency" caps are in nF, while the RF-related caps are in pF.

The resistors involved in supplying power are in Ω or kΩ. The resistors that bias the VCL11 tube or convey signal are all in MΩ.

The person who drew this schematic was trying to use the prefixes as a specific unit for a specific application for the same measure, something that the metric system came to abolish. By the way, the nano and the pico prefixes were officially adopted by the SI in 1960. Although you can find them in schematics before that year.

[rstofer]

https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1214350/boris-johnson-brexit-pound-ounces-measurements-rule-eu-law-election-pledge

[CatalinaWOW]

It is happening.  Too bad everyone is not happy with the pace.

Now we're talking. The only sensible answer to the OP's question is: Yes we know about metrication and we're doing what we can to adapt. Just give us time.

End of discussion.

Responses like "we'll never metricate our road signs because we don't care" serve the US no purpose and make the country look like a land of morons.

So in this case, waiting to switch to metric for cost reasons was perfectly rational, but other cases are not? 

I would sure like to see your computers.  They might be like the prank ones we generated in university that did arithmetic wrong.  Students who just blindly assumed that the machines were infallible went crazy.  Same thing for the prank compilers, that parsed lines to determine what type of statement they were and generated a sort of appropriate error.  And a computer like that generates inconsistent behavior.  Sound familiar?  Maybe the land of morons has very wide boundaries in latitude and longitude.

[bsfeechannel]

Ahah, well, this would be a pretty old definition, and completely irrelevant nowadays, but even so - back in the day, what it meant is basically someone who was REALLY in charge of an engine, in a train or boat for instance, in which engines required constant maintenance and care, and a fair bit of knowledge for doing so. A car driver is definitely NOT in charge of an engine in that sense anyway.
Not any more that you're in charge of the CPU when you're using a computer.

My reply was meant as joke because someone said pages ago that the road signs in the US couldn't be metric because, when you're driving a car, you're not practicing engineering.

Of course a driver's license doesn't qualify you to design engines, or structures, or circuits, whatever, but you're in control of a engineering product. In the modern world, the common citizen is in constant contact with engineering, surrounded by it, dependent on it.

Engineering became so part of everything we do that it is only natural that the system of units used in engineering be also part of the everyday life of the common citizen.

[bsfeechannel]

So in this case, waiting to switch to metric for cost reasons was perfectly rational, but other cases are not? 

Who said that?

Maybe the land of morons has very wide boundaries in latitude and longitude.

I don't know about any land of morons, but if you find one, I'm sure they'll be fighting the metric system.

[MadScientist]

https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1214350/boris-johnson-brexit-pound-ounces-measurements-rule-eu-law-election-pledge

I suspect the electorate will discover at their relative leisure , that Mr Johnson has a long history of promises and a short history of delivery. Not to mention an unfailing ability to do about turns while proclaiming the opposite.

[SilverSolder]

https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1214350/boris-johnson-brexit-pound-ounces-measurements-rule-eu-law-election-pledge

I suspect the electorate will discover at their relative leisure , that Mr Johnson has a long history of promises and a short history of delivery. Not to mention an unfailing ability to do about turns while proclaiming the opposite.

Seems the senile old goats hark back to the days of EU v1.0 (...the Roman Empire, which ruled Britain, and imposed their pounds and ounces on the senile old goats' ancestors).

[vk6zgo]

I assume you did notice however, that they use both nF & decimal parts of a uF, as well as decimal parts of a M !

The filter caps are in µF, the "low frequency" caps are in nF, while the RF-related caps are in pF.

The resistors involved in supplying power are in Ω or kΩ. The resistors that bias the VCL11 tube or convey signal are all in MΩ.

The person who drew this schematic was trying to use the prefixes as a specific unit for a specific application for the same measure, something that the metric system came to abolish. By the way, the nano and the pico prefixes were officially adopted by the SI in 1960. Although you can find them in schematics before that year.

"pico" as in "picofarads" was in common use elsewhere than EU, well before 1960, & may have been common for other measurements
which would not normally have come to the notice of those working in everyday Electronics.
It seems that the schematic you found was a "transitional' form.

[forrestc]

Responses like "we'll never metricate our road signs because we don't care" serve the US no purpose and make the country look like a land of morons.

That has never been the meaning behind the statements made.

The question was:  Why is the US not metric?

The answer has generally been: because the economic cost to do so is higher than the perceived benefit at this point. 

There hasn't been a lot of discussion about whether we will *ever* move to metric.   It's all been "we haven't because" or "we're not going to in the near future because", not "we're never going to".   And we've pointed out how we are continuing to increase metrication on an ongoing basis in areas that make sense.    I'd expect everything will eventually end up at least as metric as everyone else is.

With that said, at this point, I'm pretty certain our road signs will never be metricated, and we could possibly never end up selling gas in liters because we are rapidly moving toward the point where neither one will be needed.   At the point the cars are making decisions about how fast to go, they'll have a database of how fast they are permitted to go (probably in km/h) at each section of the road, and speed limit signs will become obsolete.  Even if we don't see self driving cars in the near future, there are many regulatory changes coming which will permit the speed limit to be transmitted electronically in one form or another to the car itself.   See for example the EU mandate to transmit speed limit information to cars by 2022, forcing them to slow down if they are exceeding the speed limit.   Once that tech is in all of the EU cars, the regulators in the US will likely be more than happy to implement some form of it here, even if it's just an audible warning or a dash display of what the speed limit is.   I know that there is work being done for car-to-car communications which will be able to transmit braking information to cars behind so that rear-end accidents become a lot less likely.  I also understand that this is also going to include some sort of speed limit and/or construction zone speed limit information capability.

I personally am already to the point where many of the mileage/exit road signs for me are largely not used.   If I care how far it is, I'm going to have my GPS navigation running, which kindly provides the distance not only in miles or kilometers (depending on which side of the US/Canada border I'm on), but also time.  And yes, I several times a year drive in a metric country.  I don't find either system to be any better than the other.

On the gasoline side, there seems to be a large move to move automobiles from Gasoline to something greener, most likely electric.   So it wouldn't surprise me to see that the number of gasoline stations drop to close to zero over the next couple/few decades.   At which point it won't matter what unit they are selling the gas in.  At that point maybe it will switch to liters.   Who knows, and probably most of us won't care at that point.

[tooki]

Responses like "we'll never metricate our road signs because we don't care" serve the US no purpose and make the country look like a land of morons.

If "...because we don't care" is what you gleaned, then you are the moron. We have said repeatedly and clearly that the reason for not changing road signs is because there is no benefit to changing them, while the cost is non-zero. You claim there's a benefit, but all you can cite is your own dislike for non-metric units. There is zero cost benefit on vehicles (halfway recent cars let you switch units on the fly), zero cost benefit on signs (it costs no more to make a sign in miles than in km), zero benefit in fuel economy, vehicle repairs, or any other conceivable automotive cost. It doesn't make roads cheaper, nor road maintenance, nor mapmaking, police patrols, or anything else. It doesn't make your phone GPS cheaper. It doesn't improve safety. So why go to the expense (regardless of how big it is or isn't) of changing the signage when there is no benefit?? (Network effects don't apply here: the fact that most of the rest of the world uses km doesn't matter, since we don't trade in highway mileage.)