why is the US not Metric

[KL27x]

American cookbooks use the 'stick' as a unit of butter, neglecting the fact that butter is not sold the world over in 1/2 US cup 'sticks'.

Ahhh. Lightbulb goes on, finally.  My bad.

We left the toilet seat up, again, didn't we? And you guys put "mL" of butter in your cookbooks, so as to be clear, everywhere? You don't have "half a stick" in your vocabulary, all out of courtesy to us? That is really sweet.  >:

;;
No, Honey. I swear! I'm not doing it on purpose. Yes, I know how mad this makes you. I just forgot this one time.   

[Cerebus]

It is easier to cut smallish chunks from a stick of butter accurately than it is to cut the larger blocks of butter typically used in European countries. 

For usability, the US wins this one!

Depends. When you're scaling a recipe for, say, six buns up to, say, 72 for a party it's a lot easier to have the whole thing done by weight. In most of Europe, or at least in all the European countries I've opened a pack of butter in, it comes in 250g blocks and they have markings for every 25g. 

Anyway, what's the point of cooking something that's got a measly ¹/₂ US cup of butter in it? I guesstimate that as  109g, which isn't even enough to make the pastry for a small pie. You need bigger blockssticks of butter!

[Cerebus]

American cookbooks use the 'stick' as a unit of butter, neglecting the fact that butter is not sold the world over in 1/2 US cup 'sticks'.

Ahhh. Lightbulb goes on, finally.  My bad.

We left the toilet seat up, again, didn't we? And you guys put "mL" of butter in your cookbooks, so as to be clear, everywhere? You don't have "half a stick" in your vocabulary, all out of courtesy to us? That is really sweet.  >:

No we weigh it out in grams butter being, for the most part, a solid; we think it's quaint that you measure it by volume.

[Mr. Scram]

I'd suggest that Wikipedia (one source), with results for the US, UK, Canada and Australia, is a bit more "search bubble" than a deliberate search across what's being sold by vendors from "UK, Europe, China and the USA".

Anyway (apart from the greedy buggers in Aus - population 25M - with their oversize spoons)  your results still come up with 15ml +0-1.3% or +0-200ul, which is about 'one drop'. I strongly suspect that making 0.5 US fl oz measuring spoons just for the US market is something that, in practice, doesn't actually happen, so they end up with 15ml measuring spoons just like the rest of us. Or the situation is standardised in the same way that mains voltage is standardised across the EU - with a wide enough margin of error that a device manufactured to a slightly off-centre spec is acceptable anywhere.

Exactly. It's a recipe so nobody cares about it being a bit more or a bit less. There's no real standardisation. When a recipe calls for grams and tablespoons it's a fair bet the actual object is referred to as that's conveniently present in any kitchen and the exact quantity is irrelevant.

[Mr. Scram]

It is how the manufacturers (sub) package them.  A standard "stick" has 1/2 cup, or 8 tbsp. of butter, with nice lines on the wrapper to cut off the chunk you need.  What's not to like? Even a metric user can chop off chunks of 15ml at a time!

It is easier to cut smallish chunks from a stick of butter accurately than it is to cut the larger blocks of butter typically used in European countries. 

For usability, the US wins this one!

There generally are subdivisions on the wrapper that mark out approximate weights. If that presents any kind of challenge you're generally not allowed in a kitchen full stop. 

[KL27x]

No we weigh it out in grams butter being, for the most part, a solid; we think it's quaint that you measure it by volume.

Solids: Can we at least keep our surface area?

Keeping it light, folks. No malice intended. In a slightly different track, let's disseminate what we are learning here.

in all the European countries I've opened a pack of butter in, it comes in 250g blocks and they have markings for every 25g.

Wow, that is a lot of butter, lol. So if stated in grams, it is universally understood how much butter matter you shall add to your Baked Alaska. And for this purpose, we have these blue lines on the wrapper. Once you get the hang of it, you don't have to read the writing on the lines, anymore, because you will automatically know each line is 25 grams. And if you need more, like say 125 grams, you will just go 5 of these lines, or maybe just use half the stick. But if you think of it like "half a stick," then you will have to know the mass of a full stick. It's easier to just memorize that each line is 25 grams and count up to 5. Cuz this might end up in the middle of a stick, today. But tomorrow, who knows? Half a stick could be 500 grams of butter! And what a mess you have, then!

Nope. Stick with the blue line. It's the only other unit you need to know besides the Meter, the Liter, and the Holy Kg, Amen. This blue line is of course just a print on a wrapper that is so far subject to the whim of the butter company. But soon we'll have a vote to make sure it is compulsory. In case one butter company changes a stick to 298 grams but keeps the blue lines on there as 25 grams per line rather than what it looks like they may be doing is dividing the stick into 10ths, I am sure they will sell just as well as the stick we've used for the last 100 years.

I'm trying to tone it down, but maybe just take my posts not so seriously. Dry humor.

This butter thing illustrates one quirk that is not actually to do with metric vs imperial. I mean, we can do decimal divisions or 10th's in imperial, too. And we can divide a bar of metric butter into quarters and 8ths, if we want. But if you removed the wrapper, isn't it easier to eyeball a quarter of the bar than 3/10ths?

This whole divide is affecting the way we eat. We are undoubtedly artificially or subconsciously rounding over our recipes to match with blue lines of decimal (or factors of 2^-1 in imperial). This is causing some loss of culinary excellence due to error introduced by measurement bias. 

With the metric butter, it would indeed be easier to convey higher precision than the American stick. Leave the marking alone, rely on the fact that the bar IS a standard size and will be for the length of relevance of the cookbook, and state the amount of butter in % of a stick. Just switch from thinking of each line as 25 grams. And think of each line as 10% of the bar. So "add 37% of a stick of butter?"  3.7 lines of butter?

Cuz you know, 25 per is not metric. It is not factor of 10. This blue line is basically like a "tower oz" of butter. If the recipe calls for 75g, this doesn't change into a 3, no matter how many times I shift the decimal point. But 30% is kosher. If you guys were serious about your metric, you would only sell butter in 1kg sticks, so your blue lines can be centagrams and the Plan will be one more step towards completion. A centagram is obviously a way better unit than a blue tower line of butter. The situation you have now, you're basically using 10ths of a 1/4 of a base unit of a kg. That's such an imperial thing to do.

[bsfeechannel]

I got a package from the US of A today.

On the CN22 customs declaration form, surely the most international of documents almost by definition, the weight was printed only in lbs, with no metric equivalent. Now that strikes me as dumb, and it's the sort thing that might, not unreasonably, lead some people to perceive that the US is a teeny weeny bit arrogant about insisting on using weights and measures (in the explicit context of international trade let us remember) that are out of step with the rest of the world.

I beg to differ. I don't think the problem be the US. The problem is the imperial system itself, which is retrograde. It is the expression of a time that doesn't exist anymore. It has no place in the present, much less in the future.

[KL27x]

Maybe it IS the Free Masons?

Our biggest export is air travel planes, which the fasteners and the ATC are imperial.
We also make an effort to produce a surplus of food and we try to push exports.
We are also the largest dealer of weapons. And I don't know what we put in those. But maybe we put imperial fasteners in the tanks and planes and air to air missiles we sell, too.

Cars are metric, but they are common enough. Most countries don't run out of cars during a war or embargo. But the above things might be a nuisance in case of disruption of trade routes. Starving is not a "nuisance," but I mean the screws. Starving is terrible.

Most of your german lathes would not be able to turn parts with imperial threading. And your imperial and/or CNC controlled stuff might get tied up. So we park our air craft carriers in your shipping lanes and wait for you to run out of screws you need to maintain and repair your planes and military weapons? 

[SilverSolder]

[...]
Our biggest export is air travel planes, which the fasteners and the ATC are imperial.
[...]

You can legitimately argue that it doesn't matter, but you can also legitimately argue that it is a sign of a company that isn't keeping up with the modern world.

[KL27x]

^I think it is odd.

On the MCAS Jakarta thread, it is said the aviation industry is very inflexible. They can't even remove a no-smoking sign from the 1970's because it will be too expensive. So changing fasteners would probably be a few km of red tape. There are probably quite a few fasteners in an airplane.

Earlier in the thread it was claimed that Airbus continued the tradition of imperial fasteners on their planes due to cost reasons. Even on a blank slate design, there are apparently a lot of common parts that are shared/recycled. So maybe you guys can take up a collection to change your own airplanes. It can't cost more than a few billion euros. And that's apparently chump change for the satisfaction of fixing something that isn't broken. 

[CatalinaWOW]

Any change on an aircraft requires a change to the type certificate which in turn requires approval from the approving agencies.  Which can mean rerunning all of the ground and flight testing to make sure they won't fall out of the air.  While this can be done by analysis both companies and agencies are reluctant to do that for liability reasons.  The upshot is that the aviation industry is very cautious about change.  Most passengers and pilots like it that way.

There have been a number of cases where an apparently innocuous change to a minor part or fastener has had embarrassing consequences.  Those in the industry are loath to add to the list of anecdotes.

All of this has nothing to do with the supremacy of a measurement system.  It is just the consequence of history and risk aversion.

[SilverSolder]

I guess the longer term future will be determined by whether the Chinese air industry will use metric or imperial?

[bsfeechannel]

Maybe it IS the Free Masons?

Nope. Look at their square.



It's graduated like a millimetric ruler:



Each long mark is separated by four shorter ones. So, I'm afraid even Free Masons have gone metric.

I think the real culprit is Abe Simpson.

[CatalinaWOW]

China will become important in the air industry, as they have in virtually everything else.  But the Chinese are very pragmatic.  They will use whichever system gets them to their goals fastest and easiest.  So if qualification costs for new metric hardware (along with all of the associated worldwide inventorying etc.) are daunting the will stick with existing standards.  If they want to create a protected domain for Chinese industry they might just use traditional Chinese units, or non-standard metric sizes, just as they have ignored world standards in several other areas to isolate their market from the world.  Or if they see an advantage to them in going

Your crystal ball is as good as mine as to what their goals are.

[CatalinaWOW]

Maybe it IS the Free Masons?

Nope. Look at their square.



It's graduated like a millimetric ruler:



Each long mark is separated by four shorter ones. So, I'm afraid even Free Masons have gone metric.

I think the real culprit is Abe Simpson.

How you make the Freemason square that you posted look like metric is beyond me.  There are certainly not four short marks between the long ones.  Nor does it match a fractional ruler where ever shorter marks apply for each halving.  This is what happens when you look to artists for quantitative support for your arguments.

[Cerebus]

How you make the Freemason square that you posted look like metric is beyond me.  There are certainly not four short marks between the long ones.  Nor does it match a fractional ruler where ever shorter marks apply for each halving.  This is what happens when you look to artists for quantitative support for your arguments.

It's not even consistent. On one division it goes:
        long-short-medium-short-medium-long and on the adjacent one it goes
        long-short-medium-short-short-long.

If the units are changed on the subsequent supposedly 'metric' example to 1" and 1/10" suddenly it's imperial with the same marking scheme and the same evidential weight. i.e. none.

Anyway, the Freemason's mythology is based on Ancient Egypt, so they're not using imperial or metric units, they are quite evidently using cubits, palms and fingers. Seven palms to a cubit and four fingers to a palm. 

The fact that no distinction is being made between 'metric' and 'decimal' is one of the many indications in this thread that at least two people here have quietly (or perhaps not so quietly) lost their grip on reason.

[SilverSolder]

It is how the manufacturers (sub) package them.  A standard "stick" has 1/2 cup, or 8 tbsp. of butter, with nice lines on the wrapper to cut off the chunk you need.  What's not to like? Even a metric user can chop off chunks of 15ml at a time!

It is easier to cut smallish chunks from a stick of butter accurately than it is to cut the larger blocks of butter typically used in European countries. 

For usability, the US wins this one!

There generally are subdivisions on the wrapper that mark out approximate weights. If that presents any kind of challenge you're generally not allowed in a kitchen full stop. 

Of course! - What I mean is,  the US sticks are "long and thin" so that the distance between each tablespoon marker is longer than it would be on a larger cross section block.  So it is easier to cut off small quantities accurately.  Many recipes only require 1 or 2 tbsp!

[KL27x]

Anyway, the Freemason's mythology is based on Ancient Egypt, so they're not using imperial or metric units, they are quite evidently using cubits, palms and fingers. Seven palms to a cubit and four fingers to a palm. 

And the smallest base unit of ancient Egypt is a digit/finger. If you change that to a 1, then it's about an inch. 4 inches to a palm, and 28 inches to a cubit. This is most likely the origin of the Sumerian inch.

Not quite, it seems. It looks like the "digit" was distinct from the "inch."

The Egyptian hieroglyph for the cubit shows the symbol of a forearm. However, the Egyptian cubit was longer than a typical forearm. It seems to have been composed of 7 palms of 4 digits each totaling 28 parts and was about 52.3-52.4 cm in length according to Arnold [13].

This is from a random internet search. Going by this figure, the egyptian "digit" was about 3/4" in modern inches. (Actually 0.74" in modern inches.)

It shows that the Greeks and Romans inherited the foot from the Egyptians. The Roman foot was divided into both 12 unciae (inches) and 16 digits.

So the modern inch might be pretty dang close to a Sumerian and Roman inch. Within a percent or two, if this random source has it right.
 
The Egyptians were pretty sophisticated. They didn't build ships and buildings by literally measuring with their palms and fingers. They had standardized measuring equipment. These are just the names they gave their units. Greeks and Romans had their own fingers and feet and forearms. But I assume they inherited these things as units of measurement from the Egyptians through Egyptian tools. Their rulers, I would imagine.

Assuming they originated from the actual measurements of these body parts at some point, 4 "digits" would be pretty much 3 modern inches across the palm. I'm getting 3.26" on my own hand, measuring right at the base of the fingers, which I think would make the most sense. 3.5" across the wider part. So I suppose my hand is potentially less than 10% larger than the hand of w/e ancient Egyptian pharaoh they originally based this unit on. Or maybe up to 17%, at most. (I assume they went by the palm measurement and just divided by four, because each finger is different!)

Interesting to know that today's very standard 3/4" building materials are pretty much an Egyptian "digit." In EU, I don't know what you have or call it. I take it your version of a 3/4" board is something like 18-20mm thick.

I wonder if the gradual favor of inch over digit had to do with increasing utilization, specification, and communication of higher precision. A ruler with 1/16th digit markings might be harder to use than the one with 1/16th inches. Maybe the digit was more common only used down to 1/8ths, for practical purposes. Or something like that.

Also, if you make a ruler with inch markings and fine power of 2^-1 graduations for those inches, you can still overlay digit integers onto this ruler and the lines will coincide. So you have a combination ruler in inches, but with additional markings for whole integers of digits. But it doesn't work the other way around. In this way, "inch" might have become the favored unit where precision mattered, and digits were still used where they were convenient. At one point during this transition period, the ancient Sumerian lumber industry perhaps produced dimensioned boards in digits, still, while shipyards were increasing using fractions of inches in their specifications and work.

[tooki]

YouTube just recommended this to me. Interesting historical aspects of metrication. In particular, I like the concluding comment that the citizens in all the metric countries only changed under duress, sometimes even revolting against metric!

[Tepe]

A ruler with 1/16th digit markings might be harder to use than the one with 1/16th inches. Maybe the digit was more common only used down to 1/8ths, for practical purposes. Or something like that.

That’s all fine and dandy except some countries’ inches were not divided into 1/8ths or 1/16ths. They were divided into 1/12ths which again were divided into 1/12ths.

For example:
 1 fod = 12 tommer = 144 linjer = 1728 skrupler
or with symbols:
 1^I = 12^II = 144^III = 1728^IV

The origin of the prime and double prime for foot and inch is simply superscripted roman numerals 

[KL27x]

A ruler with 1/16th digit markings might be harder to use than the one with 1/16th inches. Maybe the digit was more common only used down to 1/8ths, for practical purposes. Or something like that.

That’s all fine and dandy except some countries’ inches were not divided into 1/8ths or 1/16ths. They were divided into 1/12ths which again were divided into 1/12ths.

For example:
 1 fod = 12 tommer = 144 linjer = 1728 skrupler
or with symbols:
 1^I = 12^II = 144^III = 1728^IV

The origin of the prime and double prime for foot and inch is simply superscripted roman numerals 

No matter if you divide into 12th or 16th, it would still makes sense. However you divide it, the division on the digit ruler might be considered too small compared to the ones on an inch ruler. Going to inches might make it easier to take the next quantum step to the next smaller division.

And if you superimpose digits onto an ruler marked in fractions of inches, the digit integers will line up as long as you have marks on every quarter inch. Which you would have even if you divided the inches into 12ths. So if you lived in the time and place where both digit and inch were still in usage, your inch ruler could have digit markings on it, but your digit ruler might have lines that don't jive with inches.

Well, unless you divided the digits into 12ths. In fact, if you divide the inches into 16ths, then each 1/16th an inch marking is also 1/12th of a digit. So I think this might be one of the reasons why/where we got rulers marked in powers 2^-1 inches, today. Maybe inches were invented (when there were formerly digits) for the people who wanted to work in 16th's rather than 12's. So this one ruler gave them both options, just by changing base unit between digits and inches. They meet back up at the foot, so no other worries. Back then people didn't express distances like 2.0 x10^7 inches. They didn't like big numbers.

So the inch might have been invented because of different camps arguing that 12ths are better than 16ths, and vice versa. We have that same thing going on with regular oz and troy oz. And to do a conversion, all the ancient Sumerian/Roman would have to do is look at a ruler to get the other number, and then count the divisions.

Of course other civilizations might not have cared or known about digits or whatnot and just inherited the inch. And they maybe divided their inches into twelfths cuz they liked 12th's. Maybe it was easier to express 12th's in their language-slash-number system. It might have been short and sweet, like saying "a tommer" vs "a hindiglufendagnish." Or their number system might have worked way easier with 12ths. Or they just liked 12th's because there are 12 inches in a foot, and they were super annoyed by the asymmetry of subdividing 12ths of a foot into 16th's.

Ironic that America's evil imperial is from Arabia/Asia/Africa well back before recorded history.

[bsfeechannel]

YouTube just recommended this to me. Interesting historical aspects of metrication. In particular, I like the concluding comment that the citizens in all the metric countries only changed under duress, sometimes even revolting against metric!

This video is old and is the spark of last year's discussion about the (lack of) metrication in the US. The History Guy concludes that people in the US still use imperial because they have been given that choice. Duh! Truism galore. He seems to convey the idea that metrication is the work of oppressive governments. What motivation would such governments have to impose metric over their citizens? What kind of gain would those governments have? The recent move towards metrication in Guyana can give us some clue:

"In the foregoing year it was observed that generally businesses are willing to change over to the use of the metric system, but the consumers are the driving force behind the use of the imperial system."

It's clear that those who benefit the most with the metric system are those who drive the economy, and it is precisely this segment of society who pushes for metrication, not the government. But as any government knows, "it's the economy, stupid!". So...

As it has been pointed out repeatedly along this thread, for the common citizen the exact system of units is irrelevant as long as it is standard. If the metric system was so abject as THG paints it, there would be a worldwide movement to restore imperial or customary units. What we see is the opposite. With each passing day the last bastions of the imperial system fall one after another.

Steve Jobs didn't conduct any marketing research because he realized that consumers don't know what they need until you show them. The common citizen doesn't know they need the metric system, and since a system of units is not something that can be sold, it is necessary that its adoption become compulsory for the benefit of the whole economy.

Metrication in the US will happen exactly as it did in all other countries. Eventually the common citizen's resistance will be seen as a whim and the economic forces will win out.

[KL27x]

bsfeechannel:

As it has been pointed out repeatedly along this thread, for the common citizen the exact system of units is irrelevant as long as it is standard.

[bsfeechannel]

bsfeechannel:

As it has been pointed out repeatedly along this thread, for the common citizen the exact system of units is irrelevant as long as it is standard.

Good luck.

[Cubdriver]

bsfeechannel:

As it has been pointed out repeatedly along this thread, for the common citizen the exact system of units is irrelevant as long as it is standard.

Exactly.  He still hasn't presented a good argument to change highway signage in the U. S.  What we have works and is a standard.  I'm not seeing economic forces pressuring us to change road signs.

-Pat