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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?"
I think its alright to have a few different systems in the world. Sure, there is an attractiveness to consolidation. But what are we going to do when we encounter aliens? Demand that they switch to the metric system? I'm actually serious. I'm not saying it will happen tomorrow or even in the next decade or century, but eventually it will. There is a lot to be said for having a tolerance for the differences among cultures and retaining those differences.
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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In 1988, Congress passed the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act, which designates "the metric system of measurement as the preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce." Among many other things, the act requires federal agencies to use metric measurements in nearly all of their activities, although there are still exceptions allowing traditional units to be used in documents intended for consumers. The real purpose of the act was to improve the competitiveness of American industry in international markets by encouraging industries to design, produce, and sell products in metric units.
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Call them American units!
I mean, we don't use Imperial gallons here anyway
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Australia fully converted in a relatively short space of time in the early 70s. Different areas of life were changed at different times, but they were changed very quickly (e.g. a particular date was set for road signs to be taken down and replaced across the country, a different date for weights and measures in supermarkets, etc). The younger generations don't even understand imperial measurements now (it's not like the half-converted situation that the UK finds itself in).
Australia is almost exactly the same size as the lower 48 US States. So I don't think it's necessarily hard for big countries to do it. Having said that, there are some obviously differences between Australia and the US such as the smaller and generally more urban population, so it's not a perfect example. Still there's lessons there to be learnt, I think: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Australia
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)
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?
I agree, much easier to cut a board in half than into 0.5 (seriously).
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.
Yep. Just to give more background for the young-uns, I was a very young school kid in the 70's. We were told to learn the metric system and get used to it, because before we were out of high school, the country was going to be converted over entirely to the metric system.
That proclamation from our teachers was after congress passed The Metric Conversion Act in 1975. They created the U.S. Metric Board to oversee the conversion.
1979 - The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms required wine producers/importers to switch to metric.
1980 - The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms required required distilled spirits producers/importers to switch to metric.
1982 - Reagan disbands the Metric Board, and fires everyone associated with it.
So we have Reagan to thank for our reliance on an outdated system of measurement. As well as the new trend for Republicans to deficit spend like mad, ballooning the National Debts as never before, and getting religious nut wings involved in politics like never before.
I also understand that in US schools they're taught metric measurements as well as imperial measurements (however I'm sure the focus is vastly in favour of imperial units)
Actually, all of my classes were in metric. They don't teach imperial in school. At least, not in Texas (anti Texas rants in 3, 2, 1.....)
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Fractional units come from back in the days when you couldn't buy a calibrated ruler at the corner store. If you don't have a ruler, the best you can do is take an object of known measure (say 1 yard of cloth) and divide it into equal parts (fold it into thirds to get three 1-foot segments). This is probably easiest to see with measures of volume. The English system goes by powers of 2. 1 gallon is 4 quarts (missing unit in between). 1 quart is 2 pints. 1 pint is 2 cups. 1 cup is 2 gills. Why powers of 2? If you don't have calibrated beakers, how do you divide a volume of liquid into even parts? You split it in half (by weight) over and over. So it makes sense for your units of measurement to coincide with dividing in half over and over.
So back in the day when measuring was the hard part, fractions made sense. Today, measuring is the easy part, and calculating with the measurements afterward is the (relatively) hard part. So metric units (powers of 10) make more sense.
I'm an architect, and I'll tell you that the building industry is so entrenched in imperial measurements I haven't used my metric scale in five years. Every single product is based on imperial dimensions, meaning design, coordination, and calculation require the same.
Some examples: joist spacing tables display span lengths for 16" and 24" on center spacings. These tables are everywhere and they've been around unchanged forever. All the plywood sub-flooring is in 48" x 96" sheets. Works great for either joist spacing and in either horizontal or vertical orientation. If you buy a house in the US, standard is an 8' ceiling, "up scale" is 9', exclusive is 10'. (Who would know the status of a 2600mm ceiling?!) Studs are already available and pre-cut to accomplish these heights. Drywall is sold in these lengths. Concrete and soil are measured in cubic yards, roofing by square, carpeting by yard, ceiling tiles in 24" squares, etc. The International Building Code (what most of us use) gives dimensions in Imperial dimensions, including sprinkler head spacing, floor loading requirements, floor-to-floor, allowable areas, etc. Think about it, every plumbing, gas, and sanitary drain system connecting your building to infrastructure is calculated in imperial from engineering tables more than fifty years old. Tape measures are all imperial as is surveying equipment. The entire commercial real estate market is in imperial, changing to metric would crush every agent and developer trying to calculate pro-forma for all real estate in the country. Lumber mills and woodworking equipment that has been around for years and that produce moldings, doors, boards, handrails, furniture, etc., are all imperial. Existing surveys, architectural drawings, engineering calculations, and every other kind of specification, calibration, documentation, regulation, etc. in the building industry is imperial, doing a simple renovation or addition (actually >50% of the building industry) would require the overhead of converting all existing information prior to proceeding.
I've worked on several metric buildings. It takes about two days to get into the swing of it. From an architect's view, scaling and plotting drawings is much simpler than imperial. Not having to deal with foot-inches is easier, too. (Although everybody seems to disagree about whether to use m, cm, or mm. We have native metric users that can't even agree on that.) But it doesn't take long before somebody starts discussing "hard" vs. "soft" metric and wondering if buying 900 mm doors will cost 50% more than 36" doors, if a wheelchair can still fit through it, and where they might come from in the local market if they can even be found. About a day later the whole endeavor goes down the tube when one party in the process gets nervous. We usually switch to "soft" metric for a few weeks (designing in imperial but also stating metric on the drawings) and then abandon the entire metric effort in favor of imperial. The only way a project will stay in true hard metric is if it is being built overseas.
We're going to have to go metric one system at a time. First was soda bottles. Then automobiles. Science is there, and a lot of SI units are becoming comfortable on food packaging. The building industry is going to have to do the same, I predict in places where highly manufactured components interface with imperial ones in a relatively unimportant way. (Think windows cut into a wall.) Commercially, roof membranes are specified in mm and many other components are manufactured in hard metric dimensions with proximal imperial values (like thicknesses of drywall and plywood). But things like bricks, lumber, and plumbing pipe may take a while.
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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.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
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.
The problem is that people think that, if we switch, they're going to have to do math every time they see a metric value to make into a value they can make sense of. But that's just not true. What you need to do is just create new reference points. When I see a Celsius temperature, I don't try to convert it to Fahrenheit. I simply remember that 0 is freezing, I need a jacket at 10, 20 is comfortable if it's calm and sunny, 30 is comfortable if it's shady, dry, and breezy, and so on. That's what we've all instinctively done with Fahrenheit, and it's all you really need to do to be comfortable with using a different unit system in your daily life.
Then the winter came, and the Grasshopper died. And the Octopus ate all his acorns. Also, he got a racecar.
that's funny, because in ours (Australia uses metric) our drug dealers sells in ounces and pounds.
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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A couple of redneck friends of mine started using "klick" as a distance because they found out the US military uses it. Imagine their reaction when they found out (from me) that it was metric (almost as bad as being French, as far as they are concerned).
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Yes there was. My favorite sign was on a local highway segment. It said "Metric Signs Next 100 Miles." I swear to God.
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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Metric is easier. The big thing that put a big halt on the adoption was the gas crisis in the 1970's when gas creeped to $1.00 gallon. The difficulty was having to compare two standards against each other and the new standard was much more expensive for consumers. As gas pushed $1.00 per gallon. the display on many pumps could not display the higher prices. To prevent buying new pumps, some switched to Liters. Consumers soon found the cheap 35 cent / Liter gas was more expensive and later quit trying to compare prices as common knowledge was the metric gas was more expensive.
In products where we are not comparing metric and US, the metric standard has become the standard. Soda pop is only sold in metric sizes now. 12 and 16 oz are pretty much gone with 1 Liter 500 ml, 2 Liter etc sizes. Most bottled water is now in the 500 ml bottle. All hardware for mounting your flatscreen TV is all metric. Car engines are almost all metric. Serous, when was the last time you wanted to know how much your soda was in price per gallon? All comparison shopping is done is price per Liter for soft drinks except at the soda fountain where the cups are still 16, 32, 48, 64 oz.
The slow conversions is in entrenched measurements such as gasoline, kitchen recipes, temperature, etc where one is the standard and people still try to convert units. You tell them it is 24 degrees out and they want to know what that means in F. Having lived in another country I'm fine with metric as I was immersed in it and did not bother to convert. 21-24 is comfortable. 30 is really hot and 10 is time to grab a warmer coat.
If we started tearing down miles signs and mile markers and replacing them with Metric KM signs and changed the speed signs to 90, the country would soon adopt it. Most cars now can display either clicks or miles.
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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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The truth is that in the U.S. politicians are afraid of offending the majority of people, and a significant amount of them are just a bunch of redneck morons.
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This passage from the Wikipedia seems relevant:
In his 1998 monograph Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, James C. Scott argued that central governments attempt to impose what he calls "legibility" on their subjects. Local folkways concerning measurements, like local customs concerning patronymics, tend to come under severe pressure from bureaucracies. Scott's thesis is that in order for schemes to improve the human condition to succeed, they must take into account local conditions, and that the high-modernist ideologies of the 20th century have prevented this. Scott cites the enforcement of the metric system as a specific example of this sort of failed and resented "improvement" imposed by centralizing and standardizing authority.
Metrication opposition
The geek tends to see himself as anarchic-libertarian. But technocratic and elitist would be closer to the truth.
The solution imposed from on high.
The vast majority of U.S. customary units have been defined in terms of the meter and the kilogram since the Mendenhall Order of 1893 (and, in practice, for many years before that date).
United States customary units
The question then becomes why it should anyone but the architect or mechanical engineer particularly care that room temperatures continue to be displayed in degrees Farenheit.
> 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.