why is the US not Metric

[vk6zgo]

Pretty much. Any furniture grade wood shop will joint and plane practically every hardwood they use.

Plywood is made in metric countries to metric spec, but even then it can vary a little batch to batch. So we basically just deal with the fact it's not really 3/4" plywood whenever that matters. Because our 3/4" hardwood boards are actually 3/4". 

But dowels or metal rounds/tubes? With plywood, you can just cut the slot smaller. Dowels have to fit the hole. Our drill bits being imperial, so follows the material. If the construction industry changed, this would be felt in the machining industry and in engineering/design. Then I think you wait until some years later to change the media, so's when they report it in C with gusts of wind up to kmh (with imperial subtitles), it is not rejected.




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For some reason I woke up with the idea that some people don't intuitively understand what "economy of scale" means as applied to the car industry.

Every modern manufacturer has a sophisticated inventory control. When a regional distributor orders 4 red Camrys, a Toyota employee doesn't walk through a warehouse full of Camry's, go to the imperial section, find the "red" row, and drive 4 of these over to the boat. Each car has been ordered before production even starts, and it's the distributors' job to predict and/or influence the future by keeping the order queue filled with the cars that will create the biggest profit based on the figures from all of the dealers. They are tasked with matching supply to demand, ordering the right cars, and getting them to the right place. Maybe the Camry in Rosewine Red with interior S817 and body trim R173 is killing it in the Soutwest; let's get some to our other showrooms; and the memo goes out to the local dealers that this is now in the pipeline to get their salepeople pumped up to move these cars, which they can tell their customers "Gary has sold X of these last month in Texas, and the factory can't keep up; they're very popular." Even when the factory ships these identically kitted 4 red Camrys to the regional distributor, they are not all the same. Each has a unique ID and is a unique order and is handled as such. And they might tailor many of the other options to better suit local market demand, depending where the car is headed to. A large number of factory options, of which there could be dozens, and most of which are way more "permanent" than speed and mileage indicators, are easily managed this way. If you counted all the permutations of a factory Camry, the actual different number of ways to order one could be hundreds of thousands or maybe millions. So this is the only practical way to do it, anyway.

When the regional distributor orders their 4 Camrys and ships them out to the local dealers, say 1 of those dealers doesn't manage to sell his red Camry, but a dealer over in Australia wants this exact red Camry.

What the cost of imperial is to this situation is that instead of trucking a Camry across the country, putting it on a cargo ship, sailing it over to Australia, clearing customs, and getting it over to the dealer, and dealing with any other country specific changes that have to be done after it arrives? They have to do all that plus change a couple things for mile to km thing. And increasingly today, that would be done by plugging a widget into the ECM and pressing a button. Changing over the car might be an incredibly boring or tedious part of that job, but compare that to:

"Ted? Do me a solid and go change all the road signs in America. Come and see me when you're done. I need to speak with you before you go home."

You were the one who was agonising over how much it would cost to change speedos, until I pointed out you didn't have to do that at all, unless US motorist are really dumb.

A major problem with your Camry example is that the Oz Camry would be RHD (in Oz & most countries where we drive on the left, the acronym refers to the side the driver sits on).
Secondly, it would need to meet Australian Design Rules, which, although similar to US ones, differ in a few important details.

Following the end of car making in Australia, it would probably be produced in Thailand, or, perhaps Indonesia, or maybe, even Japan itself, but would be very unlikely to be from the USA, so the dealer in Oz can't get "this exact Red Camry".

As it would be designed from scratch for a RHD country, a likely destination could be Australia, New Zealand, India, Sri Lanka, or  South Africa, all of which are Metric countries, there would be no conversion cost.
If you were making cars in the USA using all non-Metric parts then having to pull them apart, change everything to Metric & send them to Oz, it would be costly, but nobody except you is talking about cars.

In the case of the road signs, because, as you were at pains to point out, US citizens are well educated, & able to work seamlessly in both Metric & Customary measures, a longish changeover period would not matter, so ten years sounds reasonable.
Of course, if you leave it all to "Ted", it may take a Century or more.

By the way, nobody rejoiced or held parades when we Metricated, we just did it!

If you really want complexity, try measuring stuff in Imperial, then pricing it out in "Pounds, Shillings, & Pence".

[Doom-the-Squirrel]

I notice that many fasteners on vehicles are metric.

For example, on Cummins engines, you use all metric (at least in my experiences).

Would be nice for the US to go metric.
Much easier to convert things along the scale.

[KL27x]

You were the one who was agonising over how much it would cost to change speedos, until I pointed out you didn't have to do that at all, unless US motorist are really dumb.

I think the cost for car companies to provide these imperial variants is trivial. And that is why America having imperial road signs and buying cars tohat display miles and degrees F does not cost the world's auto industry anything significant.

Did you think I was complaining about the cost for American car owners to change their speedometers after the Great Day arrives? No, that was not my point, at all.

A major problem with your Camry example is that the Oz Camry would be RHD (in Oz & most countries where we drive on the left, the acronym refers to the side the driver sits on).
Secondly, it would need to meet Australian Design Rules, which, although similar to US ones, differ in a few important details.

Following the end of car making in Australia, it would probably be produced in Thailand, or, perhaps Indonesia, or maybe, even Japan itself, but would be very unlikely to be from the USA, so the dealer in Oz can't get "this exact Red Camry".

As it would be designed from scratch for a RHD country, a likely destination could be Australia, New Zealand, India, Sri Lanka, or  South Africa, all of which are Metric countries, there would be no conversion cost.

It sounds like people drive on the left hand side of the road in Australia? That's news to me. I first starting typing UK as the example, but I realized they drive left side. Australia, too? Ok, you guys are the ones putting real extra costs/inefficiencies onto the car industry. But yeah, if the car needs too many changes to even be moved to a different market, then the problem of changing meters is even smaller, or you could even say it is nonexistent, now.

Of course, if you leave it all to "Ted", it may take a Century or more.

This (changing road signs) is the kind of project where you can very clearly see the beginning. And if you are a politician, you can confidently state where it will end. But then it doesn't. My point was that Ted could conceivably update the ECM on a cargo hold's worth of cars in a day, even though he might not like it.

If you were making cars in the USA using all non-Metric parts then having to pull them apart, change everything to Metric & send them to Oz, it would be costly, but nobody except you is talking about cars.

This is also news to me. I must be reading a different thread? I suppose the existence of imperial causes a lot of grief in the ruler industry? And maybe all the extra ink wasted in printing labels with metric and imperial on them? Why is America's continued use of imperial spoiling your soup if not for the auto industry? Is this really just about the imperial screw in bsfeechannel's blender?

In the case of the road signs, because, as you were at pains to point out, US citizens are well educated, & able to work seamlessly in both Metric & Customary measures, a longish changeover period would not matter, so ten years sounds reasonable.

Sure. EZ peezy. 10 years to change all our road signs. You have no idea how much highway we have in America. And you don't seem to understand that UK is still not done with their plan made in 1980's?

By the way, nobody rejoiced or held parades when we Metricated, we just did it!

Well, that makes it sound so much more appealing. You get to pat yourSELF on the back? Jolly good job on that. You guys have that part down. If I would be half that happy with myself, I'm ready to vote for Metric America.

[vk6zgo]

You were the one who was agonising over how much it would cost to change speedos, until I pointed out you didn't have to do that at all, unless US motorist are really dumb.

I promise you are mistaken. Quite the opposite, my belief is that it is trivial. You might have misinterpreted one of my posts, and that is understandable because I am sometimes low-key sarcastic. I said something to the effect that changing speedo might double the cost of a Peugot, and that was a joke. And it's not to suggest that Peugots are not well-engineered; it's a reference to the fact they are very economical and small compared to what dominates in the American market for w/e the reasons.

Some posts ago, you were worried about the costs of changing speedos on the existing fleet of vehicles.
I pointed out it was not necessary, as Americans are smart enough to learn the important equivalent speeds & interpolate the rest, just as Bruce & Sheila did back in the 1970s.
You  have since changed your ground slightly.

A major problem with your Camry example is that the Oz Camry would be RHD (in Oz & most countries where we drive on the left, the acronym refers to the side the driver sits on).
Secondly, it would need to meet Australian Design Rules, which, although similar to US ones, differ in a few important details.

Following the end of car making in Australia, it would probably be produced in Thailand, or, perhaps Indonesia, or maybe, even Japan itself, but would be very unlikely to be from the USA, so the dealer in Oz can't get "this exact Red Camry".

As it would be designed from scratch for a RHD country, a likely destination could be Australia, New Zealand, India, Sri Lanka, or  South Africa, all of which are Metric countries, there would be no conversion cost.

It sounds like people drive on the left hand side of the road in Australia? That's news to me. (I first used UK as the example, but I realized they drive left side. Australia, too? Ok, you guys are the ones putting real extra costs onto the car industry). But yeah, if the car needs too many changes to even be moved to a different market, then the problem of changing meters is even smaller or you could even say it is nonexistent.

Yep! So does Japan, which made it convenient in the early days of Japanese car sales to Australia, before ADRs came about.
Later, several Japanese companies built cars in this country.
Later still,  Toyota, & several other companies decided it was cheaper to have RHD cars built in a LHD SE Asian country, rather than Japan.
There is no extra cost, as the factories are set up from the start to produce distinct versions for different markets.
No meter changing involved.

Of course, if you leave it all to "Ted", it may take a Century or more.

This (changing road signs) is the kind of project where you can very clearly see the beginning. And if you are a politician, you can confidently state where it will end. But then it doesn't. My point was that Ted could conceivably update the ECM on a cargo hold's worth of cars in a day, even though he might not like it.

My point is that Ted doesn't need to.

If you were making cars in the USA using all non-Metric parts then having to pull them apart, change everything to Metric & send them to Oz, it would be costly, but nobody except you is talking about cars.

This is also news to me. I must be reading a different thread?

OK, maybe a bit of hyperbole, but you are quite at home with that, aren't you?
The fact remains that you were one of the first to bring up cars & roadsigns , & have been pushing that barrow pretty hard ever since.

I suppose the existence of imperial causes a lot of grief in the ruler industry? And maybe all the extra ink wasted in printing labels with metric and imperial on them? What was your argument, again?
I can't remember which angle you were playing in this thread, but I do seem to recall that America's continued use of imperial was spoiling your soup. Maybe you can refresh my memory as to your reasons?

Nah! it doesn't bother me------ you must be thinking of six other people.

In the case of the road signs, because, as you were at pains to point out, US citizens are well educated, & able to work seamlessly in both Metric & Customary measures, a longish changeover period would not matter, so ten years sounds reasonable.

Sure. EZ peezy. 10 years to change all our road signs. You have no idea how much highway we have in America. And you don't seem to understand that UK is still not done with their plan made in 1980's?

I googled, & you have approx 7.5 times the length of road we have, whilst at the same time, you have nearly 13 times our population.
It seems to me that your workforce could do it "standing on their heads"!
The USA used to be the "can do" country.
The UK have their own reasons, unfathomable to me.

By the way, nobody rejoiced or held parades when we Metricated, we just did it!

Well, that makes it sound so much more appealing. You get to pat yourSELF on the back? Jolly good job on that. You guys have that part down.

It was pretty much a "nothingburger"-------- nobody was thrilled enough to pat themselves on the back.

If you really want complexity, try measuring stuff in Imperial, then pricing it out in "Pounds, Shillings, & Pence".

Projecting your own country's previous problems onto modern day USA is lots of fun, it seems. If this is not your intent, then I'm also not being a condescending smart-ass and you are just inferring something that is not there.

Not my intention at all -----in fact, a bit out of context.
It was just to point out that the situation when I was a kid was more nightmarish than you could imagine with your rationalised "imperial" system, & of course, Decimal Currency virtually since the inception of the USA.
We had only gone to Decimal Currency 8 years before Metrication.

I notice that many fasteners on vehicles are metric.

For example, on Cummins engines, you use all metric (at least in my experiences).

Yeah. Someone else has already mentioned this. I can't remember the year, but the American auto industry has been completely metric in design stage and fasteners since the early 90's at least. I have only ever owned metric wrenches, myself.

[KL27x]

Some posts ago, you were worried about the costs of changing speedos on the existing fleet of vehicles.
I pointed out it was not necessary, as Americans are smart enough to learn the important equivalent speeds & interpolate the rest, just as Bruce & Sheila did back in the 1970s.
You  have since changed your ground slightly.

I don't remember doing that. If I did, my bad. I recall making the case that the costs to the auto industry to make imperial cars for America are trivial.

Yep! So does Japan, which made it convenient in the early days of Japanese car sales to Australia, before ADRs came about.
Later, several Japanese companies built cars in this country.
Later still,  Toyota, & several other companies decided it was cheaper to have RHD cars built in a LHD SE Asian country, rather than Japan.
There is no extra cost, as the factories are set up from the start to produce distinct versions for different markets.
No meter changing involved.

Perfect! Cars with steering column on the other side add zero cost to the world. I will agree with this statement... for now; cuz not really; it means Toyota dealers in UK can't trade cars with Toyota dealers in France, about 20 miles away, so it reduces the flexibility in distribution.* The company also has to design the left-handed version and machine and mold different parts and come up with different assembly procedures. But lessay I agree it is zero cost by whatever stipulations you are adding in order to be able to say that with a straight face. So... I ask you this question. Under these same stipulations, making cars with miles on the dial for the American market costs the car companies about how much, do you think? Ball park figure? Rough guess? Left-hand car costs nothing. Changing km to miles costs what? The drain that America is leaching from society is...?

My point is that Ted doesn't need to.

Right. Ted can change a bunch of cars from imperial to metric readout and back in a day. But we don't need to hire just Ted. We can pay a huge workforce to change our road signs over the course, by your estimate, of 10 years. So that is a bonus?

The fact remains that you were one of the first to bring up cars & roadsigns , & have been pushing that barrow pretty hard ever since.

Yes, the fact remains I am still trying to find out the first actual reason that Americans' usage of imperial could possibly adversely affect the lives of some of the participants in this thread, as has been repeatedly suggested. And? Does this really basically come down to tools and fasteners? If Americans kept the road signs and the imperial car gauges, that would be totally ok, right? We could still use imperial amongst ourselves. We just need to change the tools and screws of the smaller businesses that might do any export to avoid bsfeechannel's fridge problem? Because the major export industries are all completely metric, already, pretty much?

I googled, & you have approx 7.5 times the length of road we have, whilst at the same time, you have nearly 13 times our population.
It seems to me that your workforce could do it "standing on their heads"!
The USA used to be the "can do" country.
The UK have their own reasons, unfathomable to me.

It's probably a lot like our reasons. First world problems are more important to us, now. This keeps us from having to do sweaty manual labor under a hot sun for 12 hour stretches, far out on the road away from home. Unless people pay us a crapload of taxpayer money. This is basically called a union. And finishing the job on schedule only means the paychecks stop sooner. This job will give a huge boost to our meth and prostitution industries. "Can do" country sounds nice. But it's awful hard to impress people anymore after you've been credited with winning world wars. It's all downhill from there.

Yeah, sorry about the quip re: the pence. I must have erased that while you were replying. I figured I might be reading too much into it.

Cheers.

If this is just an America-bashing club, that's cool. I mean, I could maybe try to do a little better.

*This would be like living in Ohio and the car with the color and options you want is in Kentucky. But you can't get it. In America, not only the dealer can have the car brought to his location, you can try to get a better price by calling up the dealer in Kentucky. If he will go cheaper, you can buy it from him and then drive down there with a friend to pick it up. Esp now, I doubt UK/France would work like the latter. But, at least before Brexit, I assume the reasons for being part of the EU would include ability of Toyota to do something like the former fairly easily, if not for the left-hand thing. Being part of the same economic trading block, or w/e you guys call the EU, you'd think this would facilitate the connection between supply and demand in this kind of way.

[GK]

Not to mention the cognitive dissonance in believing that other countries are fully metric. As I and others have explained repeatedly, there is literally no place on earth that is fully metric.

Your assertion is corroborated by USMA, the US Metric Association:

"Metric is used predominantly in the rest of the world, with the US being the only major holdout."

It's not a zero-self-awareness dumb that's saying that. It's a US-based institution.

So the US works daily to disrupt the desire of the whole world to have just one system of units, accuses the world of not being fully metric, without mentioning that the US themselves are precisely the root cause of that evil, and then claim to be metric because the inch is based on the meter.

I have no idea what you're babbling about. And you clearly had no idea what I'm talking about. So here it is again worded differently: NO COUNTRY IN THE WORLD IS 100% METRIC. Even the "fully" metric countries use non-metric stuff here and there. I provided examples in an earlier comment. (For example, automotive tires actually use a mix of metric and inches.)

To make it a little easier for you two to understand each other I changed part of your debating buddies post to bold. Funny you should bring up tires. We are stuck with the mixed units for wheels and tires because of the fact that the worlds largest economy and historically largest single market for wheels and tires had written the imperial units for rim diameter into law:

"European tire manufacturers were able to use metric dimensions for tires except for the diameter which was written into previous US law to be measured in inches. Thus, all European manufacturers needed to do to get into the vast US market, which did not produce radial tires at that time, was to change one number on the tire into inches to meet US law."
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/2001-03/985878609.Sh.r.html

There are numerous imperial measures and standards that we still use today due to legacy reasons. Some completely trivial and probably mostly out of nostalgia, like Pints at the bar.  Even had the US gone metric to the same extent 40-50 years ago as did us down under along with the rest of the civilized world we'd surely still be stuck with some. Rim diameter might even be one of them, I really don't know or give a toss, but there is a whole plethora that we wouldn't have to still deal with. I doubt that there has been a single month in my productive adult life in which I did not have to deal with the inconvenience and tooling of imperial measures in one way or the other simply because of contemporary machinery, componentry and/or scientific equipment manufactured in America.

That in and of itself (regardless of the relevance that you might or might not personally give it) is a continued impost that America imposes upon the rest of the globalized economy that would barely now exist had America metricated to the same extent that we did, though I couldn't care to argue the historical and ongoing cost of this inconvenience in momentary terms - I think the true value would be inestimable. Now anyone out there so inclined can indulge in their right to deny this reality and tell me that my occasional cursing over the situation makes me anti-American, but likewise I can and will reserve my right to take any such example of a person as seriously on this point as the guy who thinks that the 5G cellular network is a NAZI weapon of genocide that is making cancerous tumors grow in his arse.

When metrication effectively began in Australia (and similarly in other nations apart from the US) our economy was far more invested in foreign trade as a percentage of GPD than was that of the US. Couple that with the fact that the majority of our exports (~75% in '66) were to countries that were already metric or in the process of converting to metric, it simply made economic sense to standardize as much as practical on this superior system of measures; we decided that we couldn't afford the insularity of the US and it was taken for granted that the short term expense of conversion was far outweighed by the long term benefit. Given the comparative independence of the US at the time, I doubt that the situation could have ever evolved into something much different or better than what we have today. That doesn't mean that I think the brightest decisions were made either.

Gimme a break!

Who are you trying to fool?

I may be dumb. But not that dumb.

Indeed, you're actually proving to be far dumber...


You see the world as being binary, everything falling neatly into right and wrong, and that's just not reality, man...

Pot, kettle.................

[tooki]

If you think I (who you failed to quote properly) am breaking things into black and white, without gray, then you have utterly failed to understand my point, which is that nothing is quite so cut and dried.

I didn’t dispute that the US is the major holdout. What I dispute is the arrogant claims that the rest of the world is 100% metric, which isn’t true. Fine, let’s forget tires; I honestly didn’t know the history of them. But that doesn’t invalidate the truth that no place is 100% metric. Inch pipe threads are common, for example. But I don’t need to explain this again, it’s been discussed and explained in detail earlier in this thread.

[KL27x]

GK,

In so many words, could you say this IS kinda sorta mostly about the screws to you? 

Lots of other countries all changed, but now there's only one imperial. So other than the fasteners, the single biggest reason you guys benefitted from changing is gone. There's no confusion over what a lb or an inch are anymore. 

If it's the fasteners, that's cool. Yeah, I think it sucks. But I think your country probably uses imperial fasteners, too? I am curious what's all the stuff you are repairing that was made in America. All the stuff I use is made in China.

[Tepe]

NO COUNTRY IN THE WORLD IS 100% METRIC. Even the "fully" metric countries use non-metric stuff here and there.

Curiously it tends to be "your" non-metric stuff that creep in (like inches for the sizes of TV screens), not our own pre-metric units.

[Tepe]

Inch pipe threads are common, for example.

But it is your inches, not our old ones...

Our inch, for example, was 26.1545 mm.

[tooki]

NO COUNTRY IN THE WORLD IS 100% METRIC. Even the "fully" metric countries use non-metric stuff here and there.

Curiously it tends to be "your" non-metric stuff that creep in (like inches for the sizes of TV screens), not our own pre-metric units.

Ok, so why do you have them at all?

The US didn’t force them on you.

Could it be that you adopted a US standard voluntarily long ago, and now the cost of switching is too great?


That argument reminds me of how Europeans often whine about English words creeping into their languages, often with a disparaging remark implying that the US and UK somehow have forced them to do so. As a native English speaker, I assure you, we have ZERO interest in you borrowing our words and mangling them. But moreover, it’s just not how it works: word borrowing happens by pulling words from other languages, not by those languages pushing them.

Similarly, there are essentially no manufactured products from USA that the rest of the world is dependent on; there’s invariably a substitute manufacturer somewhere else. And the US certainly can’t force you to buy them. And this has always been the case: no one has ever forced you to purchase from USA. So if you did, and that product was in customary units, it was your choice to buy it.

Inch pipe threads are common, for example.

But it is your inches, not our old ones...

Our inch, for example, was 26.1545 mm.

As for why US inches stuck around and local European ones didn’t: the US is a huge single market. It is big enough that economies of scale within that market make producing to US inches cost effective.

Wanna save some money through standardization? Eliminate the half dozen different 230V AC plugs used in Europe. Oh, but that’d cost a lot of money, and the transition period would be difficult, and the benefits clearly not worth it, or else you’d do it voluntarily. 

Or get rid of the various languages and just impose one metric language. That’d simplify a lot of things. (I’ve worked as a technical translator, so I’m acutely aware of how very expensive it is to produce the same thing in multiple languages.)

Funny how Europeans whine about Brussels decreeing how everything has to be the same, stomping on their national freedoms, while ragging on the US for not complying...

(Note that I’m only naming and shaming Europeans because I happen to live in Europe, so I witness these various arguments all the time. I’m sure if I lived elsewhere, I’d have equivalent arguments.)


Does this help elucidate how silly the arguments against the US’s incomplete metrication are?

[KL27x]

Inch pipe threads are common, for example.

But it is your inches, not our old ones...

Our inch, for example, was 26.1545 mm.

Small statistical sample, maybe. Bsfeechannel doesn't wear a flag. But a lot of the met-oric seems to be curiously stronger from former imperial countrymen?

I can imagine your pain, Tepe, seeing inches that are not YOUR inches. That doubly sucks that you assimilated to a superior system only to continue to see the WRONG inches, everywhere!

I'm being serious. I'm sorry you lost your inches.

added:

Now, IF you guys had said, hey! Let's totally adopt metric. But let's also continue to use inches, if and where we want. But only let's agree on ONE inch. Let's define it by metric?     Would you care if your 26.xx mm inch was changed to something very close in order to compromise with the other nations? We truncated our inch to more easily conform to metric. So our inch isn't the right inch, either. But we said F it. It's close enough. We essentially banished our own dirty inch to internal legal purposes, so as to shield the world from it.

So if you ever wanted to cheat on metric and use our what is now the last remaining internationally recognized inch - the one that we (as a world; not just the US; and not just that other country-not-Guyana; but also the metric crowd which somehow knows 20x as many imperial units as Americans) have so far managed to keep from extinction for w/e the reasons you want to believe - you are welcome. It's not our inch; it's just the modern inch. We like to just say inch, but you guys can call it tower inches or w/e makes you feel more comfortable.

[Tepe]

Curiously it tends to be "your" non-metric stuff that creep in (like inches for the sizes of TV screens), not our own pre-metric units.

Ok, so why do you have them at all?

Beats me

The US didn’t force them on you.

I didn't say it did. I guess it crept in due to the combined weight of the British Empire and the US in trade.

That argument reminds me of how Europeans often whine about English words creeping into their languages, often with a disparaging remark implying that the US and UK somehow have forced them to do so. As a native English speaker, I assure you, we have ZERO interest in you borrowing our words and mangling them. But moreover, it’s just not how it works: word borrowing happens by pulling words from other languages, not by those languages pushing them.

Exactly! That English is the main source at the moment just goes to show the great prestige it has at the moment. Before that, in these parts, it was French, German, and Low German. That's just how it works.

Wanna save some money through standardization? Eliminate the half dozen different 230V AC plugs used in Europe. Oh, but that’d cost a lot of money, and the transition period would be difficult, and the benefits clearly not worth it, or else you’d do it voluntarily. 

Here that is being done in the weirdest way: We are now allowed a choice of Danish, French, and German type outlets... 

Does this help elucidate how silly the arguments against the US’s incomplete metrication are?

I am not arguing for or against metrication of the US.

[Tepe]

I can imagine your pain, Tepe, seeing inches that are not YOUR inches. That doubly sucks that you assimilated to a superior system only to continue to see the WRONG inches, everywhere!

I'm being serious. I'm sorry you lost your inches.

It just a curiosity. I don't think anybody cares
Metrication here was done by a law passed in 1907 with the period 1910-1916 to adopt the new system. Since then, the old measures have died out.



1 mil = 4 fjerdingveje = 40 kabellængder = 2.400 roder = 4.000 favne = 4.000 skår = 12.000 alen.
1 alen = 2 fod = 8 håndsbredder = 24 tommer = 128 bygkorn = 288 linier = 3.456 skrupler.

[bsfeechannel]

What I dispute is the arrogant claims that the rest of the world is 100% metric, which isn’t true.

The rest of the world IS 100% metric and you know that's true. You can hear echos of imperial or customary units "here and there", but you know darn well that imperial outside the US is DEAD.

The confidence of the world in metric units is such that many countries banned imperial by force of law, in other words, imperial is illegal.

Imperial has no future whatsoever, so do not maintain any illusions about it.

[boffin]

Is it actually a problem that metric and imperial co-exist?

It doesn't seem any different than dealing with ancient measurements elsewhere (e.g. when cooking:  tablespoons, teaspoons, cups, ...)  which can be more convenient in real world usage than an exact number of milliliters...   in fact, mixed units are common when cooking.  (e.g. 600g flour + 435ml water + 1.5tsp yeast + 1tsp salt + 2tbsp honey to make bread dough).

Interestingly, the new season of [US Based] "Good Eats" appears to be mostly metric.

[Mr. Scram]

Is it actually a problem that metric and imperial co-exist?

It doesn't seem any different than dealing with ancient measurements elsewhere (e.g. when cooking:  tablespoons, teaspoons, cups, ...)  which can be more convenient in real world usage than an exact number of milliliters...   in fact, mixed units are common when cooking.  (e.g. 600g flour + 435ml water + 1.5tsp yeast + 1tsp salt + 2tbsp honey to make bread dough).

Tablespoons are just that. Somewhat useful when most kitchen scales don't do small measurements well but not a fixed small amount. Similar to a pinch. I strongly doubt people who measure everything else in grams and millilitres use anything else than an actual tablespoon.

[Cerebus]

Tablespoons are just that.

Not quite. If you use proper cook's measuring spoons, vis:

where you can level off the measured item with the back of a knife, so you're not into 'level teaspoon, rounded teaspoon, heaped teaspoon' territory, then a tablespoon is 15ml, a dessert spoon 10m and a teaspoon 5ml.

[CatalinaWOW]

What I dispute is the arrogant claims that the rest of the world is 100% metric, which isn’t true.

The rest of the world IS 100% metric and you know that's true. You can hear echos of imperial or customary units "here and there", but you know darn well that imperial outside the US is DEAD.

The confidence of the world in metric units is such that many countries banned imperial by force of law, in other words, imperial is illegal.

Imperial has no future whatsoever, so do not maintain any illusions about it.

Yep.  Dead.  Dead as it can be dead.

The attached picture shows my relatively new made in China portable electronic scale.  The clever button allows you to select units.  There are four choices.  In this order.  Pounds, jin (a traditional chinese unit), ounces and kilograms.

In most of the world measurement systems are a tool, not a religion.  I have found three of those four unit selections useful in different circumstances.  It hasn't strained my intellect to push the button, or to read the annunciator to see which unit is being displayed.  Others may find this more challenging.

[tooki]

What I dispute is the arrogant claims that the rest of the world is 100% metric, which isn’t true.

The rest of the world IS 100% metric and you know that's true. You can hear echos of imperial or customary units "here and there", but you know darn well that imperial outside the US is DEAD.

The confidence of the world in metric units is such that many countries banned imperial by force of law, in other words, imperial is illegal.

Imperial has no future whatsoever, so do not maintain any illusions about it.

I and others already provided you with proof that non-metric measures are still in active use in so-called metric countries. It’s not 100%, and likely never will be, unless you propose leveling all existing structures to make sure no inch threaded pipes remain in use, because otherwise inch thread spare parts will have to remain available. Similarly, all pre-metric objects will need to be scrapped, lest non-metric parts be made available.

Oh yeah, and commercial aviation is a thing. With few exceptions (again, already named in prior posts), all commercial aviation uses nautical miles for distance and feet for altitude.

So for you to claim that the rest of the world is 100% metric is demonstrably, provably wrong.

[tooki]

Is it actually a problem that metric and imperial co-exist?

It doesn't seem any different than dealing with ancient measurements elsewhere (e.g. when cooking:  tablespoons, teaspoons, cups, ...)  which can be more convenient in real world usage than an exact number of milliliters...   in fact, mixed units are common when cooking.  (e.g. 600g flour + 435ml water + 1.5tsp yeast + 1tsp salt + 2tbsp honey to make bread dough).

Interestingly, the new season of [US Based] "Good Eats" appears to be mostly metric.

Wasn't Alton Brown always pro-metric, at least when precise measurement was required?

[CatalinaWOW]

What I dispute is the arrogant claims that the rest of the world is 100% metric, which isn’t true.

The rest of the world IS 100% metric and you know that's true. You can hear echos of imperial or customary units "here and there", but you know darn well that imperial outside the US is DEAD.

The confidence of the world in metric units is such that many countries banned imperial by force of law, in other words, imperial is illegal.

Imperial has no future whatsoever, so do not maintain any illusions about it.

I must also point out that most of the world has made a lot of things illegal.  Like murder.  Driving faster than posted limits.  Stealing other peoples property.

And for reasons totally incomprehensible to some, those activities still occur.  Even though almost all agree that the world would be a better place if they didn't. 

I don't lose much sleep over the difference between a perfect world and the one we actually live in.

[Cerebus]

What I dispute is the arrogant claims that the rest of the world is 100% metric, which isn’t true.

The rest of the world IS 100% metric and you know that's true. You can hear echos of imperial or customary units "here and there", but you know darn well that imperial outside the US is DEAD.

The confidence of the world in metric units is such that many countries banned imperial by force of law, in other words, imperial is illegal.

Imperial has no future whatsoever, so do not maintain any illusions about it.

I must also point out that most of the world has made a lot of things illegal.  Like murder.  Driving faster than posted limits.  Stealing other peoples property.

And for reasons totally incomprehensible to some, those activities still occur.  Even though almost all agree that the world would be a better place if they didn't. 

I don't lose much sleep over the difference between a perfect world and the one we actually live in.

I think this is just a case of someone not understanding that "not legal for trade" and "illegal" are two completely different things.

Yes, if I set up a market stall in the UK and exclusively use Imperial units to weigh the goods I sell I will get slapped on the wrist, and prosecuted if I persist. I will not however fall foul of the authorities if when asked for half-a-pound of carrots I weight out half a pound and let my scales calculate that at the marked price of 50p/kg that comes to 11p. Just the same as when I go into a pub and ask for a pint I will be served 568ml.

Imperial/customary units are not, to the best of my knowledge, "illegal" anywhere. There is no black market in oz weights, nobody siddles up to you, flips their "Flash Harry" coat open and whispers "'Ere guv! I've got some loverly Whitworth screws 'ere, nice mature BA spanners. Oh, oh, watch it, a rozzer just came around the corner". The police cannot get a search warrant on the grounds that they have "reason to believe that Mr. Smith of 33¹/₃ Two Mile Drive is in possession of a quantity of 12 inch rulers".

[KL27x]

Guitar that goes to 11.

American: that's different. But the markings are perfectly spaced. The silkscreen is fine. We will just use it the way it is.

vk6go/Cerebus: well, it works good enough. But in my head I will convert it, so as to think only the proper value. When this guitar is worn out, I will get one with the proper knob.

Bsfeechannel: Volume knobs go to 10, not 11. Burn the evil.


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A lot of countries abandoned imperial for metric. For most countries, they had good reasons to do this. And many did not have a good reason to not simply forget imperial.

America was an innovator in machining and manufacturing. I don't know who invented the rifle, but America was at the forefront of development. America was just a wilderness an ocean apart from the civilized world and the cradle of technology. Despite this, America developed many innovations and the Kentucky rifle was at one point the pinnacle of this technology.

To make rifles requires lathes to bore straight barrels. And to make the rifling, there are many methods. But the best rifling of the age was made in a very similar way that threading is cut. It requires a lathe with a gear box. This didn't exist, yet. This is how we got to threaded fasteners to begin with.

Getting to where we are today, regarding our ability to precisely and accurately shape steel requires actual tools. It requires a lot of them. Anyone who is kinda into machining knows you need a bazillion different tools to do it. And after you have a bazillion tools and bits and adapters, you still always need to buy one more to finish the job. Shaping steel is slow. Modern machining capability is the result of centuries of persistence, like water eroding a river rock. You can't build or rebuild that in a day. Each block was used to build the next and so on, into a massive pile of parts and tools that work together.

I wouldn't go so far to say America is the father or cradle of modern machining. But America has a very long and deep history of advancing man's accuracy and ability to shape steel. And this ability and accuracy has nothing to do with any measuring system. This bajillion tools which you could say have been producing the worlds finest weapons since the 1800's to today, are valuable because they are accurate, not because they may or may not be in inches. Tanks and guns are not made with metric or imperial. They are made with steel, shaped by people using tools.

It's not just machining and weapons. It's manufacturing, materials science, heavy machinery like tractors and earth moving equipment. And heavy drills for making wells and for extracting crude oil. Electricity and locomotives. Light bulbs. The Model T to General Motors. The Wright Brothers to Boeing and to outer space. America still leads the world in some of these areas. And in many more, they were right up there if not leading the way for more than their share of the past 200 years.

To a country that had not developed advanced machining and manufacturing technology, w/e their trade partners or conquerors brought to them, that was infinitely better than what they had. They had no reason to not forget imperial, cuz their technology (not their intelligence or education) was well behind. They didn't necessarily choose metric. They chose the better technology.

When German technology showed up on your shores, your jaws dropped to the floor. You said "I'll take that! The markings on the tools are funny, but what the heck. We were using imperial buckets only to measure the cow manure and mud we smear on our straw huts. I think we'll be fine with millimeters."

When German tools showed up on our shores, we said "Well, they copied our collet design. The way they adjust the tram is improved. And it looks like they finally figured out the reason this mating surface should  intentionally be not quite parallel. They closed the gap a bit on the backlash, too. This bit looks interesting, though. Let's figure out why they did it."

It might put things into a new perspective if you keep in mind that a lot of our most amazing and world-changing technology was developed during wars and in the cold war era. Technological advancement was not a luxury. It was a race. America was one of the frontrunners, and Americans ran this race in inches. The wake this leaves behind is pretty significant.   

[Cerebus]

Guitar that goes to 11.

American: that's different. But the markings are perfectly spaced. The silkscreen is fine. We will just use it the way it is.

vk6go: well, it works good enough. But in my head I will convert it, so as to think only the proper value. When this guitar is worn out, I will get one with the proper knob.

Bsfeechannel: Volume knobs go to 10, not 11. Burn the evil.

You've missed the point of the original joke.

... much preamble omitted...
Marty: "Why not just have ten be louder?"
Nigel: "But these go up to eleven"
Audience thinks: "That Nigel's a real stupid tit"

Ergo, those who think that 11's better are Nigels. Those who think 11 is still good when everybody else is using 10 are at least Ruperts*.

*Drawn from an informal scale of given names of English upper class idiots traditionally associated with the 'officer class'.