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Why Does the US Cling To Imperial Measurements?
PhunkySchtuff writes "As one of only three countries on Earth that hasn't converted to a metric system of units and measurements, there is a huge amount of resistance within the US to change the status quo. Whilst the cost of switching would be huge, there is also a massive hidden cost in not switching when dealing with the rest of the world (except for Liberia & Burma, the only other two countries that don't use the metric system) With one of the largest organisations in the US, the military, using metric units extensively, why does the general public in the US still cling to their customary system of units?"
Because Kimmy Carter was a Pu$$y and Reagan was a Luddite.
It'd smack too much of you giving in to the French.
Seriously, it's really frustrating when watching American science documentaries and all of the units aren't SI units. Scientists should always, always use metric.
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to do business with us. Just like our approach to treaties we can do something unique and dickish because we can.
And what this means, in reality, is that if you're doing work for the Federal Government, you do all your work in Imperial Units, and then convert them to Metric. So you don't actually get "standard" metric sizes... you get "standard" Imperial sizes with metric units labeling them.
Its much more intuitive for an advanced civilization to have a base(x) counting system with measurement standards being built of the counting system. so aliens are more likely to understand a metric system better than imperial. Aliens should be able to understand the true nature of mathematics and use that to classify sizes, not the average size of a foot.
However i disagree with America conforming "just because". we haven't even moved to a base 10 timing metric yet, who are we to judge?
Your argument about being able to convert from one system to another is valid - but why bite that bullet before we have absolutely no other choice?
Is it OK/beneficial to have different standards on how some things are done/built? Yes: those differences may make one method better than another for a particular set of applications. Ideally, though, those different processes should be condensed into a single process that covers them all applications well enough that we can all standardize.
Having said that, I fail to see a reason why ANYONE would need more than one *MEASUREMENT* system.
Are there any technical benefits to having more than one measurement system? (besides having one more way to confuse PHB's and morons out there). Tolerance for other's preferences/cultures aside (i.e. this isn't exactly a "burkas vs. miniskirts" debate)
The thing is, even if they are both based on arbitrary fundamental measures, SI units are self-consistent, while imperial measurements are not. So a lot of arbitrary constants are required in the US that are not needed elsewhere.
I was born and raised in a country that is firmly and decidedly "metric". I finished school and college knowing nothing but metric system. So, you could say that metric would be my "natural choice".
Then I moved to US. At first non-metric units were a PIA. Admittedly, conversions are not nearly as convenient - you can't just shuffle a decimal dot around.
After a while, though - it really started to "grow on me". The first shift occurred when I started driving a lot - both in US and in Europe. For reasons, that are purely subjective, I began to feel like a mile (statutory or nautical, your pick) is a more "natural" unit of distance. Kilometer always fell short. In a way mile represented what I feel a "decent distance" should feel like.
Then, as I took up a hobby (or a waste of money, depending on your take on it) that required significant amounts of engineering, machining and manual work - I started to feel the same way about other units. Inch is exactly what a "small but human scale" distance should be (it is unusually pretty close to what you'd get if you were to show a "very short distance" by making a semi-circle with your thumb and index fingers, like a slightly opened O), so did the foot, the ounce for "a small amount of weight" etc. I also began to appreciate division of inches into powers of two (rather than centimeters into powers of ten etc).
In time, conversions became a non-issue. In fact, it probably helps keep my "doing arithmetic in my head" skills less rusty.
I still occasionally use metrics as a way to do "thru conversions", in particular between volume and mass (because one deci-meter of water is one liter of water is approx 1 kg). I also use metrics where they are the only units - such as electricity, for example.
But at this point, I would not voluntarily go back to metric system for anything that's related to weights and dimensions.
YMMV. That said, perhaps there are other people who feel like me. If so - that's your answer as to why Imperial units are still here (and, hopefully, going to stay for a while)
You are missing the point. The main argument for the metric system is NOT because it is standard, regardless of what TFA says. The reason we should switch to the metric system is the same that the rest of the world has already -- it simply makes a whole lot more sense. Everything is base 10, and if you know what the basic unit of measurement is you can very easily figure out how to go between units simply by moving a decimal place. Imperial measures, on the other hand, are totally psychotic. 12 inches to a foot, 3 feet to a yard, 5,280 feet to a mile. It is the type of nonsense that we would expect to see in Dr. Seuss story, not it real life.
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I was taught metrics in 1st grade, that was back in the 70s, and it's so easy a 7 year old can master it.
This imperial crap almost everyone else in the US uses is rather incomprehensible.
Your foot is divided by 12 inches, which are divided by 16ths, yet it's 3 foot to the yard, and god only knows how many yards in a mile. Here's a fun trick to do, ask some of your friends or relatives how many yards are in a mile. How many of them will actually give you an answer, much less the right one. Bet more than half can't, at least without someone else how many feet are in the mile. And let's not forget the long delay as they try to divide by 3. Not very impressive is it.
Now, ask some kid who knows metric how many meters are in a kilometer. How many centimeters are in a kilometer. Bet you that prepubescent child that know metric will give you an answer really fast, and be right every time. It's because metric is a concise system based on 10 that even an imbecile can understand it, and smart people make far fewer mistakes because it's a consistent system.
You want to screw over the country when dealing with the rest of the world, keep using imperial.
We've lost people and multi-million dollar machines because of imperial, is it really worth it?
Yes some of those rules of thumb break, but you end up with different and new rules of thumb instead. For instance, 100km/h is a pretty standard speed on many roads (don't be daft, they wouldn't convert 60 mph to 96 km/h ... they'd make it 100). So the distance to your destination in 100s of km is the number of hours until you get there (e.g. 300km = ~3 hours, 425 km = ~4 hr, 15 min). I personally use that rule of thumb all the time when driving.
Also wouldn't approximately 1 foot be approximately 30 cm (why convert exactly to 30.5 if you're only talking 'approximately' in the first place?) 30 cm divides cleanly by 15, 10, 6, 5, 3 and 2. Kinda nice actually.
The US is a big country so it takes a while to change things.
We started teaching the metric system to kids in elementary school in the 1970s.
All the signs would need changing ...
I recall a lot of the signs were changed, displaying both imperial and metric for a while, then a decade or so later they went back to just imperial. Also if we had only changed signs on the normal replacement cycle we would probably have been done by now.
, all the measurements in laws ...
Trivial effort is required to convert, far less than what is expended interpreting the law. Also note that in many contexts, units on packaging, imperial and metric are still side by side.
, all the schools, ...
Done in the 1970s.
and much of the culture ...
If we had stayed on course it would be over by now.
:-)
The sig doesn't mention it but yes the calculator does metric.
Approximately one foot is also, coincidentally, approximately 30 centimetres. Tacking on half a centimetre to an approximation is ridiculous. What if the length is 30 cm, and the imperial length is 11.7 inches?
60km/h: standard residential street where I live. One kilometre per minute.
The imperial standard isn't used because you honestly genuinely think it's better: it's because you have an irrational fear/hatred of the metric system than your country so sorely needs.
Metric is a heck of a lot easier to explain than imperial.
Lets see, 2.5 cm per inch, 12 inches per foot, 5 foot per fathom, but its also 5280 feet per mile...and its 3 feet to a yard, which is kind of like a meter, but not quite...
As opposed to simple powers of 10 for metric. If we could today snap our fingers and have everything switched over, with no conversion costs, it would be a no brainer.
Now, of course, the US has trouble exporting to a world where nobody has Imperial-sized tools or fasteners.
Not to mention your weird "Letter" size which is inexplicably the default in all your word processing programs when all the rest of the world uses A4.
I don't think I've ever seen Letter paper in my life, but I just installed LibreOffice and whoops, Letter, and measurements in inches. Grrr.
Don't worry, we don't think the less of you all in the States for it. Well, that's not actually true, we think it's kinda cute and sweet that you have your precious little antique measurement systems - aww, how retro! - but we figure eventually you'll grow out of it and become a proper country.
Then we think about all the nuclear reactors and rockets you built using feet and inches and get night sweats.
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Yes, there are some.
Sometimes it's a matter of scale -- for instance, units based on electron-volts are useful when you want to talk about the energy in a single photon or electron, or things on that scale, while the Joule is a much more accessible unit when you're at the scale where metric units make sense -- can't get much simpler than a kilogram meter per second. It's not just a matter of a nano-Joule vs a Joule -- it's a matter of the electron-Volt being based on how elementary particles actually behave, while the Joule is based on fairly arbitrary (but convenient) metric units.
Sometimes it's a matter of who is using the unit, and what they're using it for. I often talk shit about the Kilowatt Hour -- Watts are Joules per second (energy per time) and the Kilowatt Hour is Kilowatts per Hour (power per time, where power is energy per time) -- so you end up back at energy. The Kilowatt hour is basically a really clumsy multiple of the Joule -- or at least, it's really clumsy if you're dealing with Joules, which would imply you're dealing with physics and engineering. The fact that electrical appliances are rated in watts means that a kilowatt hour is still quite convenient if you want to know, say, how much it's going to cost to run a box with a 250-watt power supply 24/7, or a 700-watt, 70-inch HDTV for a few hours a day, or how long it'll take for a CFL to pay for itself, and so on.
Degrees Celsius vs Kelvin. Kelvin is a lot more useful if you need to do actual calculations -- again, physics/engineering -- but the difference between 273 kelvin and 313 kelvin doesn't really mean as much as the difference between 0 degrees Celsius and 40 degrees Celsius.
Or angle measures -- degrees are much easier for humans to work with than radians when just trying to figure out the angle, but radians are a much more natural angle to do any sort of calculations in, especially since they technically aren't even units. You can do crazy things like take that 7200 RPMs your hard disk spins at, convert it to radians/second, and multiply it by the radius of your hard disk in whatever units you want, and you'll get the linear velocity of the edge of that disk in those same units.
That is, 45 degrees is a lot easier for humans to learn than pi/4 radians, but if you know you've got pi/4 radians, that's a lot easier to apply to almost anything.
I could go on, and that's just off the top of my head, from what is theoretically a freshman physics course.
None of this, by the way, is a justification for imperial measurements. Those are just retarded. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to learn Celsius for temperature -- I know what 40 degrees Fahrenheit feels like, but I have no idea (until I convert it) what 5 degrees Celsius feels like. Still, I'd be the first to suggest any shift towards better units -- maybe while we're at it, we can fix the whole minute/hour/day weirdness and start dividing the day by powers of 10 instead.
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But I admit it doesn't matter whether you call it centimeter or inch or measure the distance by the eyebrow length of the great communicator Ronald Reagan.
Call it the freedom fighting anti-communist inch of the greatest empire on earth, if you wish. And make it twice as long as every other country's unit.
Doesn't really matter.
What matters, is the fucked up unit system within the imperial system.
Let's say you want to convert 1/8 inch rainfall to gallons per square yard? Yes, doable, sure. In the metric system however it's just counting zeros and shifting a decimal point.
A meter has 100 centimeter, so a square meter has a 100x100 square centimeter, or 10000. Easy, just count zeros. Liters in a cubic meter? Easy. Kilograms per square centimeter to tons per square meter? Easy, just counting zeros.
But square inch to square feet? Square miles? floz to gallon?
And if that isn't bad enough, add all the competing units used in the US. Air pressure is a different unit when the air is in the atmosphere or in the tire. For energy, there are different units depending on whether it is an air conditioner, a furnace, a car, what company I get the energy from, and whether the second Friday after Lincoln's birthday falls on a full moon.
The difference to the metric system is not, that inch and cm are different. The beauty of the metric system is that you have a consistent system. And that's why scientific calculations are usually done in metric and the result is then transfered back to imperial, so the US public won't get worried that the French took over, communists gained control of the class room, or that their politicians betrayed the greatest conceivable nation on earth.
I would think that working in metric would be much easier and less error prone especially in engineering and construction:
Off the top of your head which set is faster:
1/4" + 3/16"
24" + 6.5'
7/8" + 1/2" - 1/4"
Or
6.5mm + 4.5mm
60cm + 2m
2.2cm + 1.2cm - 63mm
Given that you can convert millimeters to centimeters to meters by just moving the comma or adding 0's I would recon it's much faster than calculating/remembering how many inches is in a foot, how many foot is in a mile or how many miles in a hogshead.
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what if they're just a bunch of alien redneck morons?
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Don't worry, we don't think the less of you all in the States for it. Well, that's not actually true, we think it's kinda cute and sweet that you have your precious little antique measurement systems - aww, how retro! - but we figure eventually you'll grow out of it and become a proper country.
Then we think about all the nuclear reactors and rockets you built using feet and inches and get night sweats.
You want to foster international cooperation and a sense of unity?
Stop being a condescending cunt whenever you talk about something that the US does differently than your country/countries.
But that's just familiarity. If you grew up under a metric system, were taught metric in school and saw metric measurements in everyday objects (other than the 2 liter soda bottles...) then you'd be able to visualize 1 kilometer just as easily as you could visualize 1 mile today.
The issue here is that it will take a generation (or more) to make that transition, during which time all the big nobs will feel increasingly isolated as they're more quickly overtaken by these 'new math' thinkers. Inertia is comforting.
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They are self-consistant and use a fixed base. Imperial units do not use a fixed base. They're expressed in decimal, sure, but fractions of an inch are measured in fractional powers of 2 (exceptr for mils, which are measured in thousandths), inches are measured in base 12, nails are measured in base 16, hands are measured in base 4, palms are measured in base 3, feet are measured in base 3, yards are measured in base 22, chains are measured in base 10, furlongs are measured in base 8, miles are measured in base 3.
Imperial units are "natural" measures - you will find that most (if not all) natural phenomena will work out to an exact integer number of some measure or other. This made them great when making exact measuring devices was extremely difficult. Far and away easier to use a measuring device that occurs all around you. If you're sneaky, you can even use Imperial Units from different countries. (A foot in Belgium is not the same distance as a foot in America.)
Some of the units I've given above are now only used in specialist cases. Since people tend to go from yards directly to miles, you now have yards measured in base 1760. (This would obviously be useless if you were using a tally sheet of any kind, 22s, 10s and 8s are far more practical and far more easily counted manually.)
However, none of these units are remotely useful EXCEPT when measuring natural phenomena (which never happen in convenient SI units). Trying to program a computer in eleven different base systems would be horrible. Trying to get it bug-free would be impossible. Trying to get anything remotely intelligent to display would be ludicrous. Sure, computers can convert between Imperial and SI and then do all the SI internally. And this would be useful how? You're adding extra layers of complexity on the human end (which is naive at best) and adding extra layers of complexity into the code (which is downright stupid and irresponsible).
I was one of the few generations in England to be taught both Imperial AND Metric systems in school, simultaneously. This was in the transition period in the early 70s (before half the current Slashdot readership was born). I also had to learn both the decimal and pre-decimal currencies. Trust me, modern English schoolkids are missing NOTHING by being wholly metric. Well, so long as they understand the history as well. The history is valuable because without it you cannot understand historic descriptions accurately. The numerical values would make no rational sense without the context in which the units were created.
Of course, things not making sense has never stopped US schools or school boards in the past, hence the proliferation of creationist textbooks in science classes.
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And every time this stupid discussion comes people spend all the time talking about why we should switch and not why we shouldn't.. The Imperial units used in the US are a barrier to entry to the US market by foreign manufacturers and producers. A single example: When we build bridges and buildings in the US the steel and measurements are produced in US Imperial units, even the steel shapes are specific to the US market because the measurements are in imperial. Producers of steel beams and components in foreign countries have steel mills that are calibrated to metric sizing and are unable to produce US steel shapes without a major retrofit to the mill. Although there are similar shapes and sizes they are different enough that it's not possible to us metric sizes. This keeps US steel manufacturing jobs in the US and is the primary reason Congress rolled back the metric initiative 3 years after it became mandatory.
People complain about US job losses, but you want to see the destruction and undercutting of thousands of US jobs by foreign producers then convert the US economy to metric. Imperial units keep countries like China from taking a 10 year plan of losses to destroy all US steel producers so they can take over the market and charge more later.
There is simply no reasonable reason to demand a mandatory switch. Products that are sold internationally are already in metric, most products are dual labeled. Everyone is free to sell products in whatever unit of measure they want. Frankly the government declaring the metric system the only valid form of measurement is well beyond the scope of federal authority. We should allow the market to decide, if you like metric measurements then simply refuse to buy products sold in Imperial units.
It took me all of about 2 hours overseas to get used to Celsius. I think it's stubborn pig-headednes more than anything else. We can't possibly be wrong about ANYTHING, so we'll probably be stuck with this awkward-ass system for generations to come. Or until our Chinese overlords force us to change...
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This post is an example of autoplagurism.
A good system of units needs:
1) Base units which are well defined and independently reconstructible (i.e. a suitably equipped lab can calibrate their equipment purely from the definition of the units.)
2) Logically constructed compound units (e.g. units of force are derived from the units of mass, time and distance.)
3) Logically constructed convenience units (e.g. kilometres for use for distances which would be an inconveniently large number of metres.)
4) To be widely used.
The initial choice of your base units is largely arbitrary - whether it was a from a not-very-accurate measure of a king's foot size or from a not-very-accurate measure of the Earth's circumference. Item (1) can be satisfied equally well (or, in the case of mass, badly) by the metric or imperial systems. The definition of the metre has long since changed from the size of the Earth to quantities measurable in a lab (as has the definition of the foot.)
The SI system (based on metric measures) beats the imperial system hands down on items 2 and 3, and because of this now has a large advantage also on item 4.
Item 2: In Imperial you might measure (heat) energy in BTU and mechanical energy in some mixture of foot-pounds-seconds, but then you need a conversion factor to compare the two. Such conversion factors are never needed in SI.
Item 3: Imperial also messes up the convenience units by having lots of weird conversion factors (e.g. an acre is (I think) a furlong by a chain. How many square feet is that? How many ounces in a ton?*) Metric uses convenience units constructed from base units via consistently named factors of 10 or 1000.
One could go a step further, and define your fundamental units in terms of fundamental physical constants (i.e. the Plank mass, Plank time and Plank distance, charge on an electron, etc.) In such a system of units, the speed of light is 1, the formula for the energy of a photon doesn't need a constant in it etc. In practice, we can't use such a system, because we can't measure (in particular) the universal gravitational constant G with sufficient accuracy. Every time we got a better measure of G, our entire system of units would need to be updated. (I.e. with current technology, this system can't satisfy requirement (1) above.)
* And how many different sorts of ounces and tons are there? It is quite a few.
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Except you're incompatible with the rest of the world. Metric also gives you easy conversions between say, cubic metres and litres. Rather than cubic feet to gallons.
1 cubic meter = 1000 litres. 1 cubic foot = 7.4805 US gallons or 6.2288 Imperial gallons. I know what I'd much prefer to work in.
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> This made them great when making exact measuring devices was extremely difficult.
No. As you pointed out yourself: A foot in Belgium is not the same distance as a foot in America
People were forced to create exact measuring devices for all units. Else, they will be cheated. There's a reason why every old church in Europe has circles etched on their front-side. People could hold bread to them to verify they were bought the correct amount. Etc pp.
> However, none of these units are remotely useful EXCEPT when measuring natural phenomena (which never happen in convenient SI units).
Celsius comes to mind.
> then do all the SI internally
Last I checked, computers used base 2, not SI units.
Nearly all Americans are taught metric measures beginning in grade school (I was in the 60's), and continuously throughout their education. We have used, and continue to use, the metric system across a large number of fields since the 1800's, where it has been useful, and makes sense. Where it doesn't matter, who cares? As someone who has lived and traveled in European and Asian countries that, of course, use the metric system, for at least 1/5th of my life, I can tell you that for certain purposes our traditional measurements are simply more intuitive. I completely understand Centigrade/Celcius, for example. But Fahrenheit is simply superior in conveying relative temperature comfort for humans. Zero is about as cold as I ever want to be, and 100 is my limit for hot. 50's are right on for me (I prefer a little cool). Anywhere in-between I can easily imagine where I stand. I get meters completely (hey, about a yard), but there's no equivalent to foot, which is a very good measure for humans to quickly and intuitively get. How do we humans tend to naturally measure distance over ground? We pace it off. We use kilo's all the time, but a pound just feels more natural. A slender young woman is about a hundred. As I reached my 50's I began to push 200. As "arbitrary" measures go, traditional measurements just seem a lot less arbitrary. Bottom line, don't worry about it damn Borg. I'm sure we'll be assimilated eventually.
I tried decimal time.
Decimal measurement makes things really cute and easy for the scientists.
It also makes things a royal pain in the ass for humans, since the real world is analog. The watchface; separated into a 360 degree circle (ever noticed even the scientists can't bring themselves to decimalize the circle?), divides cleanly into 12 hours, that divide cleanly into 60 minutes, 60 seconds, etc. It all remains whole units. It's divisible easily and cleanly by 2,3,4,5,6,8... USEFUL.
What the hell, the decimal trolls already modded a post I had up to 5 down to -1 once, so I'll continue and if they don't like it they can go fuck themselves.
The basic problem with metric vs imperial is that they both spawn from two different environments.
Metric spawned from scientists in a lab. It works great in a lab. Everything is very precise, very orderly, and while they're in the lab they don't have to give a crap about the real world. They need to divide something in half and it comes out with a .5 in it, then they need to cut it in thirds afterward? What the hell, they don't care about a few repeating decimals here or there, they're scientists.
"Imperial" spawned from everyday people using the relatively standard things they had on hand to measure with. It even had the good sense to obsolete measurements when they became irrelevant (we don't measure by "rods" or the "hogshead" anymore).
Want to know why we use tablespoons/teaspoons for cooking? Because it could be assumed that just about every household had at least one "Table Spoon" and "Tea Spoon" on hand already. No need to go out buying special measuring devices (get a dinnerware set from IKEA and compare the table and tea spoons in it to standard, you'll find they are close enough to handle rounding error). Need a 1/2 teaspoon or 1/4 teaspoon? Measure a full one on the chopping board, slice it with the back of your kitchen knife. This is how most home cooking operated.
A standard cup? Guess what - a standard cup.
Everyday devices for everyday measurement. No need to go buying special, laboratory-grade equipment specially tailored to exacting specifications just to make your fucking breakfast. No need to try to measure out the quantity of applesauce you're putting into your latkes in a graduated cylinder.
I find it funny - every metric superiority troll running around here starts screaming "well we make it easy because then we just play with the units till they come out cleanly", making new "standards" that instantly obsolete old ones and make maintenance a royal pain in the ass and require new equipment or retooling of existing equipment. And the cost of buying/retooling everyone's equipment is not negligible.
What's even funnier is that these metric superiority trolls will do a quick 180 (see, gasp, a non-metric unit again!) when it comes time for them to argue over whether customers are getting full value when marketing uses a Metric Gigabyte (1GB=1,000,000,000 bytes) instead of a "Real Gigabyte" (1Gibibyte=1,073,741,824 bytes) when stating the capacity of storage media.
I agree with you and the GP. In school in the '70s, I learned about the metric system / SI. PBS even had an entire series called "The Metric System"... I still remember part of the theme song. As time has passed and wholesale conversion didn't happen, I realized something: for everyday private life, SI has no clear advantages over the US customary system. There is nothing compelling about a kilometer or a meter that makes it a clear and necessary replacement for the mile or foot. The same goes for the kg vs. the pound (I know, that's comparing mass vs. weight, but if we don't need to allow for gravitational fluctuation then the difference is meaningless), or the liter vs.the quart. Yes, it's easier to convert from liquid measure to linear-cubed in SI, but you know what? Do you know why almost no one knows how many gallons are in a cubic foot? Because no one cares. It sounds nice on paper but for everyday life that's not a conversion people need to make. Yes, using the same system as the rest of the world makes commerce easier and I do believe that all Americans should at least have a passable understanding of SI and how its units compare to US customary. But in this instance the expense, disruption, and anti-convenience of a mass conversion at the personal level trumped the benefits to international commerce.
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Have you seen the official definition of a meter? The distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458th of a second.
Frankly, I'd rather use a yard because I can easily estimate it at three of my feet.
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