How Pirates Of The Caribbean Hijacked America's Metric System (npr.org)

If the United States were more like the rest of the world, a McDonald's Quarter Pounder might be known as the McDonald's 113-Grammer, John Henry's 9-pound hammer would be 4.08 kilograms, and any 800-pound gorillas in the room would likely weigh 362 kilos. NPR explores: One reason this country never adopted the metric system might be pirates. Here's what happened: In 1793, the brand new United States of America needed a standard measuring system because the states were using a hodgepodge of systems. "For example, in New York, they were using Dutch systems, and in New England, they were using English systems," says Keith Martin, of the research library at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. This made interstate commerce difficult. The secretary of state at the time was Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson knew about a new French system and thought it was just what America needed. He wrote to his pals in France, and the French sent a scientist named Joseph Dombey off to Jefferson carrying a small copper cylinder with a little handle on top. It was about 3 inches tall and about the same wide. This object was intended to be a standard for weighing things, part of a weights and measure system being developed in France, now known as the metric system. The object's weight was 1 kilogram. Crossing the Atlantic, Dombey ran into a giant storm. "It blew his ship quite far south into the Caribbean Sea," says Martin. And you know who was lurking in Caribbean waters in the late 1700s? Pirates.

Comments

Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

very telling and accurate: the retarded rollercoaster

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[MightyYar]

You made it worse by skipping 22 yards to a chain, 10 chains to a furlong (metric!), and 8 furlongs to a mile...

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Nutria]

Roller coasters are fun, and make life enjoyable. Driving across Kansas? Not so much...

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[sjames]

It's only telling in that it tells how rarely a typical person needs a mile of something customarily measured in yards. That's the thing about customary measures. They tend to be most convenient for measures most people need most of the time. Less so for things not often needed.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[ShanghaiBill]

But the American system sucks even for comparing similar units.

How many fluid ounces in a cubic inch? Why 0.554113, of course.

How many pounds does a gallon of water weigh? 8.3454.

Now let's try metric:

How many cubic centimeters in a milliliter? 1.0000.

How many kg in a liter of water? 1.0000.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Very funny and true graphic, but seems like a better comparison would be something like

On the US side

Inches to a Yard
Yards to a Mile
Ounces in a Pound
Pounds in a ton

Then on the rest of the world side

Centimeters to a Meter
Meters to a Kilometer
Grams to a Kilogram
Kilograms to a Tonne

They would still be all over the place for the US side, but they are much more comparable units of measure.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[sjames]

A pint is a pound, the world around. There are 231 cubic inches in a gallon.

Now divide a yard neatly by 3.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[serviscope_minor]

They tend to be most convenient for measures most people need most of the time. Less so for things not often needed.

Simple measurements are fine in any system as are fractions thereof. It's the conversions where imperial starts to really suck. Imperial has multiple different unit schemes for various things, such as a FlOz based volumetric system and two cubic linear measurement (imperial foot and survey foot based).

Fun thing: my UNC taps have the required drill size stamped on the size in meric.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that neither a US pint (473ml) or imperial pint (568ml) is a pound (454g, or 454ml of water).

Sure the us

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Now let's try metric:

How many kPa in a millitorr? 7500.6167382113.

How many joule in a eV? 6241509000000000000.

How many dynes in a Newton? 1.0e5

How many kilogauss in a Tesla? 10.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

As for the date, I prefer year, month, date. Especially when dating files for archiving. When you use something like 20181228-filename.ext Your files will always be in date order when sorted by filename.

Sure there are file time stamps that can also be used for this purpose, but the true file date stamps can always be lost depending on how the files are manipulated during moves or copies on the file system.

For instance in windows a file move from one directory to another on the same volume always keeps the original date, a file copy tends to take on the current date for the copied file, since technically that is when the copy of the file was made

But if going between volumes a move from one volume to another can also trigger an update of the time stamp since you aren't really moving it as far as the file system is concerned. A move from one volume to another is in fact a copy to the new volume, then a delete of the file on the old volume.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[aardvarkjoe]

But the American system sucks even for comparing similar units.

How many fluid ounces in a cubic inch? Why 0.554113, of course.

How many pounds does a gallon of water weigh? 8.3454.

You want to know how often I want to convert fl oz to cubic inches? Or find the weight of a gallon of water? The answer to the first is "never", the second is "so rarely that I'll just Google it."

We'd probably be better off using the metric system, but it's debatable at best whether the advantages are worth the cost required to change. The strongest advantages are probably with standardization with other countries, rather than with ease of use.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[ShanghaiBill]

A pint is a pound, the world around.

One pint of water weighs 1.04375 pounds.

There are 231 cubic inches in a gallon.

Cool. That is handy when you need an 11th of a gallon, which is exactly 21 cubic inches.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Mr D from 63]

How many cubic centimeters in a milliliter? 1.0000.

How many kg in a liter of water? 1.0000.

How boring. Not even remotely interesting. Where are all the good metric jokes? .. How far would you go the meet her..... is that it?

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Mr D from 63]

Roller coasters are fun, and make life enjoyable. Driving across Kansas? Not so much...

No doubt. Footlong hotdogs couldn't exist in the metric system. That alone is enough reason.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Io10t. You forgot that conversion can only be at a given degree. So you going to fix your mistake?

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

IMO, America can easily move to liter for liquid measurements -- most Americans already are familiar with 1 and 2 liter beverage sizes. Further, even Americans aren't always that great at converting between units.

Weight, aka "mass on earth", isn't that bad either.

Kilometers is the next on the list. This is made more difficult as it means changing exit numbers and other highway signs. (Exit numbers are normally based on mile-markers, with 12-a, 12-b, 12-c meaning there are three exits within that mile.)

Temperature is the last to go. Celsius gets everything wrong. 0C is too high -- you have to deal with negative numbers a lot more often. 100C is way too high and also pointless -- you can see water boil. And the result is that temperatures you care about are in a narrow range. At the same time, several east coast cities have average lowest daily temps near 0F and average highest near 100F. You have to convince people that a measure that was almost ideally engineered for the only thing most people use it for is worse that a measure that was developed for a use case that almost no one cares about. That is an uphill battle.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Whibla]

I might be wrong but I thought it was 22 yards to a rod, 10 rods to a chain (220 yards), and an acre is a rod by a chain.

I wasn't sure about furlong, other than yours 'looked' wrong, but someone below has used 40 rods (880 yards) as a furlong.

Complicated, not so much. Esoteric, perhaps, but at least it's on a human scale, or rather at one we can visualise / comprehend.

Since the metric 'system' stays the same regardless of the scale of measurement it's easier to use across multiple scales, but social history and social inertia will ensure that not everything at the human scale will be measured or described in metric.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[thinkwaitfast]

" Less so for things not often needed." Unless you are a chemist or in school, how often does someone need to know that?

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[sjames]

But note that the density of water is only 1 g/cc at 4 C. At any other temperature, it will be less.

For purposes of baking and most other things people actually do routinely, a pint is a pound.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[thinkwaitfast]

Celsius is just a bad unit. Nobody uses that in science, everything is in kelvin.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

1ft is approx 30cm or 300mm or 0.3m.

You could always make it bigger (I know you Americans like big phallic objects), to 50cm and call it a half-metre. The foot long will pale in comparison and if my assumptions of American desires of length comparison is correct, the half-metre will catch on really quickly as Americans love stuffing them down their gullet.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[hey!]

There's a reason these are called "customary" units. They were contrived to be convenient for highly specialized and closely related tasks.

For example a rod was the typical length of a medieval ox-goad. If you laid out a line 40 rods long, you've got a furlong, which is about the length of furrow a man with a single ox could plow without giving his animal a rest. If you lay out a rectangle 1 furlong by four rods, you have an acre, which is about what he could plow in a day.

Customary units are far more convenient for the tasks they're optimized for. But it's the modern need to do more complex calculations relating things across problem domains that makes them awkward.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Pseudonym]

A pint is a pound, the world around.

You're going to get a surprise if you ever order a beer in England.

Your pint will be 20% larger than you think. It will also be lukewarm and slightly chewy, but that's another issue.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Pseudonym]

Oh, while I think of it, there's an old joke, one form of which goes "Which weighs more, a pound of gold or a pound of feathers?"

The feathers weigh more than the gold.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[dryeo]

We're metric in Canada and you can still buy a foot long hotdog, as well as quarter pounders etc. Just the receipts (if measured and not just sold as an unit) have to show metric. So if you buy 10 feet of rope, it'll actually be rung up as 3 meters or so of rope.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[dryeo]

Imperial is pretty simple, especially after switching to the 25.4 mm inch. A gallon has 10 lbs of water in it (at 50F or such) which of course translates to 160 fl oz, just like 10 lbs has 160 ounces in it.
The problem is America doesn't use Imperial, but rather the old English measures. At least you did switch inches back in the '50's, just keeping the American inch for surveying.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[jeremyp]

Nope.

There are 277.419 cubic inches to a gallon.

What's that you say? There are two different gallons in the World? How messed up is that?

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Celsius is just a bad unit. Nobody uses that in science, everything is in kelvin.

The only difference between Kelvin and Celsius is where the zero point is. Try again.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[bickerdyke]

But at what error margin? The age of that ox alone would probably the difference if it could be 3 or 5 furlongs per day. So yes, these make sense as units of comparisons like an whale weighing something like x-hunderd small cars or how many Libraries of Congress a USB Stick can hold. But not as actual measurement.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

> The feathers [wikipedia.org] weigh more than the gold [wikipedia.org].

Amazing. These units are way more brainfscked than I could ever imagine.

Sometimes I just wonder why we bother... maybe their minds are beyond repair.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

And an inch is about the length of the tip of a thumb and a foot is about as long as a size 10 foot. People overlook the fact that the English system or Engineering system is designed for physical tasks and relate to a human and are easily estimatable. I would love someone to physically estimate on their body 1mm or 1cm. You can't physically approximate and just have to get used to it. It is harder and more abstract. Granted, for scientific purposes, fine, but, Engineering and construction are better suited to being able to physically approximate something rather than just having to "know how long a centimeter is"

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[cascadingstylesheet]

Customary units are far more convenient for the tasks they're optimized for. But it's the modern need to do more complex calculations relating things across problem domains that makes them awkward.

Which is why, in the US, scientists use metric and everyone else, for normal everyday life, continues to use the convenient units they always have.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[stfvon007]

Sure they can, they just have to be as long as someones foot.

Now who wants a hectogram with cheese?

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

The international inch is closer to the customary inch than the imperial inch.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[kenai_alpenglow]

But will it only cost a pound on that side of the pond?

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[kenai_alpenglow]

I got tired of subtracting 273.whatever all the time. Just give me Kelvin instead.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for explaining ISO 8601 to us. You use Windows? Oh you don't say. Fucking retard.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[Immerman]

Why would you want to estimate such a small resolution? Where on your body do you estimate 1/2"?
Meanwhile using traditional body-based sizes:
1 fingerbreadth ~= 20mm
1 hand ~= 100mm
1 foot ~= 300mm

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

But the point of metric is scientific use, not approximation. So in metric something may be 1 meter, or "about a yard" in Standard units.
But it would be wrong to say something is 1 yard, or "about a meter."

Now tell me what time it is. In metric, since metric is so awesome.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[MightyYar]

Yeah I mean I'm an engineer and prefer to work in SI, but I can't come up with a reason to force people to buy a 4 liter jug of milk instead of a gallon of milk.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[Immerman]

Why stop at a half-meter ya wimp? ;-D. You haven't lived till you've had a meter-long chili cheese dog and a few liters of beer for lunch.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[MightyYar]

I was just trying to make a joke using units that no one uses anymore, so maybe I got the quantities wrong :)

Google says 16.5 feet to a rod, 22 yards to a chain, 4 rods to a chain, 10 chains to a furlong, and an acre is 1 furlong x 1 chain (long because it was hard to turn the plow around...).

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[hey!]

That said, I often like to convert volumetric measurements like cups into metric mass units. This makes it much easier to achieve consistent quantities for things like flour that can be compacted, and easy to scale recipes up and down.

I also measure out coffee grounds and water for coffee in grams because I use set ratios (depending on method) of 1:12 or 1:15.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[ceoyoyo]

The size of the pint is a nice surprise. The cost will not be.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[ceoyoyo]

It's only half bad. The difference between celsius and kelvin is a scalar offset. Celsius also has the convenient feature of having the freezing point of water at zero. The one that's all bad is farenheit. You have to add AND multiply to get something sensible.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

don't over think it. they're good enough estimates for what they're trying to get done so that they can spend less time thinking and more time doing.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Zorpheus]

Dynes and Gauss are not part of the SI system, that's the old cgs system.
Torr also aren't part of the SI system.
eV is used in science, but it is neither an SI or metric unit.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Where on your body do you estimate 1/2"?

What foolishness! Here's a thumb in your eye!
Where on your body do you estimate 12.7 mm?

"the cornea has a diameter of about 11.5 mm" - Wikipedia
Also, size variation in eyes of diverse populations is remarkably small.

Conversions and scalings are left as an exercise.

captcha: discord

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

16.5 feet is perfectly divisible by 2, 3, 4, etc too!

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why, in most of the rest of the world, they sell milk in 1 liter bottles or cartons (tetrapak).

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Funnily enough most people in Europe buy 1 litre jugs of milk, except for the UK where you buy 2 (UK) pints.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[KozmoStevnNaut]

And "a litre is a kilogram". So why not just use metric?

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[KozmoStevnNaut]

IMO, America can easily move to liter for liquid measurements -- most Americans already are familiar with 1 and 2 liter beverage sizes.

A US liquid quart is 0.95 liters, close enough that most people probably wouldn't notice a difference in everyday use.

Celsius gets everything wrong. 0C is too high -- you have to deal with negative numbers a lot more often. 100C is way too high and also pointless -- you can see water boil. And the result is that temperatures you care about are in a narrow range.

I disagree. Celsius has plenty of precision for everyday use, the difference between 25C and 26C matters just the same to normal people as the difference between 77F and 78F. If you do actually need more precision, you use decimals like you would in Fahrenheit, because I sure as hell hope you don't use fractions for temperature.

0C also makes a lot more sense than 32F for the freezing point of water, as it has a big correlation with weather. If the temperature in Celsius on the forecast is negative, I can probably expect my car to be frozen and the roads to possibly be slippery. If it's -2C, it's probably not too bad, if it's -10C or below, it's probably going to be more severe. 0C makes for a very nice and convenient delineation.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[serviscope_minor]

That said, I often like to convert volumetric measurements like cups into metric mass units.

I always do. Firstly I'm in the UK which makes it easier because we already favour mass units over volumetric ones for dry things like flour. The reason is that my scales are much more accurate and convenient than a measuring jug.

Well, except for small things. They only have a 1g precision so I use a set of measuring spoons for very small volumes.

But yes, on the whole weight based measures in cooking are superior.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

In America, computers do complex calculations, not people.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[serviscope_minor]

A pint is a pound, the world around.

No it ain't.

A pint is 20 floz over here thankyou very much.

Now divide a yard neatly by 3.

OK, now divide it by 10.

Or that absolutely standard size board of 2400x1200 OSB/ply/chipboard/plasterboard/whatever, divide it by 3. Kinda easy, huh?

That argument only makes the slightest sense if you expect to have nothing but small integer numbers of the right kind of units.

Now divide your inch by 3. It's a pain because the customary subdividions are either integer 64ths, or 1000ths, neither of which divide by 3.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[serviscope_minor]

What's that you say? There are two different gallons in the World? How messed up is that?

It gets worse. Large scale measurements for hydrology are in acre-feet. You might think thats simply 1*66*660 cubic feet (because 66*660 is such a natural measurement) except that acre-feet are customarily measured in survey feet which are very slightly different from normal feet.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[serviscope_minor]

The one that's all bad is farenheit. You have to add AND multiply to get something sensible.

You could switch to Rankine. then you'd only need the multiplier.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm 40 and an engineer and have never needed to do any of those calculations. I mean I could if needed, all we do is metric at work...but where do you live and what do you do that you'd ever need this? And what happens, as it so often does in the real world, when you start throwing angles or time into the mix? Personally I do almost everything based 2 or in hex, why not that?

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Customary are far more convenient for the tasks they're optimized for.

The Farenhiet scale is another example, where the definitions make the scale a strong mnemonic for certain situations:

  * 100 was set as a best guess at the time for the human body's internal temperature. (They got within a fraction of a degree.) When temperatures approach or exceed 100 F, it isn't enough to just relax when you're getting overheated. You must stay hydrated or suffer heat stroke and risk death.

  * zero was set at the coldest temperature they could easily and repeatedly generate in a lab: The melting point of pure ice saturated with salt (at sea level pressure, etc.) This is important when driving in states that salt their roads in the winter. When the temperature in degrees F goes negative the salt stops working. Drive VERY carefully or you end up in the ditch, risking death.

Given that those situations are deadly AND rare, it'37.s nice that these easy to remember round numbers flag them. Meanwhile, the boiling and freezing points of water (212F and 32F) are used often enough that they get memorized. With C, 100 and zero are boil and freeze, but will you remember 37.777... and -17.7777 as important numbers for heat stroke and deadly road conditions?

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[thinkwaitfast]

Cost. Besides, everybody does use metric where appropriate.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[thinkwaitfast]

I've ordered beer in England and I don't care

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[sjames]

But since we were discussing the U.S., what you think a pint is over there is quite irrelevant, don't you think?

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[fj3k]

Temperature in Celcius: divide by ten and round to an integer; then 0 = freezing cold, 1 = cold, 2 = mild, 3 = hot, 4 = burning hot. Simple.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[dunkelfalke]

So you really never had the situation where you need to measure a certain amount of water but didn't know the volume of the container you were using?

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[serviscope_minor]

But since we were discussing the U.S., what you think a pint is over there is quite irrelevant, don't you think?

You said "a pint it a pound the world around".

Which it isn't.

You're the one that brought up "the world". So don't complain when I actually read what you wrote.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[dunkelfalke]

Moreover, Celsius really helps the kids to understand negative numbers since it is an obvious example and something they would be familiar with by the time they have to learn that.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Complicated, not so much. Esoteric, perhaps, but at least it's on a human scale, or rather at one we can visualise / comprehend.

No it's not.

You can do it because you grew up with it and are used to it and anyone who grew up with metric will be able to visualize / comprehend metric units just as easily.

but social history and social inertia will ensure that not everything at the human scale will be measured or described in metric.

Literally everyone used imperial units before metric existed and everyone else switched.

But yes, there is a social inertia that prevents the switch. That inertia is the strongest among people who associate British imperial units with their 'murican heritage.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

We'd probably be better off using the metric system, but it's debatable at best whether the advantages are worth the cost required to change.

There is literally no cost in changing.
You just have to decide that all new signs and markings should have both units and let time do the change.
A generation later when people are used to the new units you decide that new signs should leave out the imperial unit.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Mr D from 63]

We're metric in Canada and you can still buy a foot long hotdog, as well as quarter pounders etc.

You can thank us for that.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[MightyYar]

That would last my family a single meal.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[MightyYar]

That sounds wasteful of packaging. You can buy quart (roughly a liter) bottles of milk in the US - and half-gallon (2-liter-ish) is pretty common. But gallons are the only way to go when you have a family - we already buy a gallon every other day and my understanding is that this gets worse in the teen years.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[MightyYar]

Yeah, that's a funny conversion - I presume they didn't work much in feet when parceling out property... too small a unit.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[MightyYar]

Converting to weight is always better. This works with ounces, too - any scale you buy in the US will have both grams and ounces. Grams for drugs, ounces for cooking :)

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

you know, in all the years I have lived in the UK, I have never been served a 'lukewarm' pint by the barman.

have you been there? To the UK, I mean?

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[Frankzy]

~38 C for body temperature? Absolutely. The salt measurement i can't speak for as i live in northern Sweden where they never salt the roads.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[michelcolman]

I used to be all for the metric system, but apparently God himself (in the form of the Spaghetti Monster and its pirates) has decided that the US system should remain. So be it.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but it's bonkers to only consider -17 as 'dangerous'. Below 1deg is already reason to be cautious on the road.

37deg is easy to remember and it's marked on any body-thermometer. I just checked, body temperature is 98.6 in Fahrenheit, which is also probably marked on a thermometer.
Outside temperatures depend on humidity. 30 is caution, 40 is danger. Easy peasy.

I guess it's just what you're used to

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Metric is appropriate everywhere. It is based on powers of ten, just like the decimal system you use every single day.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't know about anyone else, but for me:

width of pointing finger ~= 1/2"
distance from last knuckle to tip of pointing finger ~= 1"
and best of all:
1 foot ~= 1'.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Actual measurement

How does knowing that furrow is actually 201.68 meters long help you more accurately asses how much your ox can do before needing a rest? There is no use for such precision in pre-industrial times. Even when assessing the value of a plot, it's going to be calculated based on how the prospective owner will be able to utilize it. "Yup, that thar field is something my ox and I can plow in a fortnight."

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Milk is so cheap right now. About $1.79 a gallon here in Indiana.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Cro Magnon]

Kelvin works okay if you live in Minnesota. Otherwise, no.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Do a third-metre sausage. It's 33.33 cm or a little over 13 inches. Perhaps redefine the words "foot" and "yard" to mean a 1/3 metre and 1 metre respectively. A mile could be 1 1/2 km, since imperial system users love fractions so much. A 3-to-2 ratio is easier than what we have and you can keep your traditional words for things.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[sjames]

An american pint also weighs a pound in the U.K.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[sjames]

Because in home baking, I am unlikely to need a kilo of something.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

"So if you buy 10 feet of rope"

You asked for 10 feet of rope and so they converted it for you to try to be compatible with you. You could have went and asked for 3 meters and they would have given you that. Unfortunately there is a very long "transition" period between imperial and metric.

The only thing that really hasn't changed is wood products. They are still listed as 2x4's and 4x8's to be compatible with the larger US market.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Both date orders shown in that image are wrong. We specify nearly everything by going from largest unit to smallest unit.

Year. Month. Day.

ISO date format is the one true date format. If you're using anything else (including bass-ackwards European format), you're doing it wrong.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[aardvarkjoe]

So you really never had the situation where you need to measure a certain amount of water but didn't know the volume of the container you were using?

I've never had that situation in a case where it would be easier to weigh the water rather than measure it. I'm sure some people do occasionally, but my guess is that my experience is pretty typical; I doubt that it comes up with any frequency for most people.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[drew_kime]

37deg is easy to remember and it's marked on any body-thermometer. I just checked, body temperature is 98.6 in Fahrenheit, which is also probably marked on a thermometer.

Random fact: Average body temperature was first calculated in Germany, and reported as 37 degrees C, with error bars. In the U.S. they did a strict conversion and dropped the error bars. And it turns out the original measurement wasn't that great to begin with.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[dunkelfalke]

I have this precise situation quite often in the kitchen. It is much easier to put the water container on a kitchen scale than to measure the amount of water somehow.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

With C, 100 and zero are boil and freeze, but will you remember 37.777... and -17.7777 as important numbers for heat stroke and deadly road conditions?

Heat stroke is easy to remeber.... Same with -40 propane turns to gel.... -50 we just stay in doors... What is this salt on the road you speak of?

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Funnily enough Americans are NOT in fact European. THey have room in their house for a large fridge, and room in the fridge to place WHOLE GALLONS of milk in them. WHY?!?!?! you ask???

So we dont have to go to the store every freaking day. One of my coworkers has 6 kids at home. How long do you think a liter of milk will last?

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[serviscope_minor]

An american pint also weighs a pound in the U.K.

then the rhyme shoud be "a american pint is a ponud the world around". Merely "a" pint is not anything the world around since definitions differ.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[buchanmilne]

"You want to know how often I want to convert fl oz to cubic inches? Or find the weight of a gallon of water? The answer to the first is "never", the second is "so rarely that I'll just Google it.""

Americans do none of these because it is too difficult without SI units, where the rest of the world considers this to be elementary and uses regularly.

If you have a pool, how much water does it hold? This is somrthing I have had to quickly calculate without consulting tables, an in SI units it is trivial.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[robkeeney]

What makes setting the freezing point of pure water at 0 and the boiling point at 100 convenient? I keep hearing this said, but no real explanation for why it's more convenient than setting 0 to the freezing point of a saturated brine. They're arbitrary. I do find the smaller degree of the Fahrenheit scale more convenient though.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

The calendar is wrong for both because of the confusion caused by dates like 8/11/2017 - is that Aug 11 or Nov 8 - the appropriate calendar to use should be CCYYMMDD - 20170811 - which also happens to provide a natural sorting order to dates.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[trogdor_linux]

I estimated half an inch all the time with half the tip of my index finger.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

>>Weight, aka "mass on earth", isn't that bad either.
Should be -- Mass, aka "weight on earth"

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[trogdor_linux]

You are literally wrong.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[buchanmilne]

"And an inch is about the length of the tip of a thumb and a foot is about as long as a size 10 foot."

My size 10 feet are 300mm, my thumb from knuckle to tip is 34mm (so 40% more than an inch). Your justification for using your units doesn't have much merit.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[desdinova 216]

but I like chewy beers.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Sweettoother]

We're metric in Canada and you can still buy a foot long hotdog, as well as quarter pounders etc. Just the receipts (if measured and not just sold as an unit) have to show metric. So if you buy 10 feet of rope, it'll actually be rung up as 3 meters or so of rope.

In Canada, restaurants still list their drinks and meat in ounces, people still use the imperial system when talking about a person's weight and height, and grocery stores still advertise the prices of their produce and most of their meats predominantly as dollars per pound, even though the country officially switched to the metric system decades ago. It's a real mess. e.g. fresh blueberries are listed as dollars per pint and frozen blueberries are listed as dollars per 600gram bag.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[ceoyoyo]

I guess you don't live somewhere it gets cold.

If the temperature is less than zero it's likely to snow rather than rain, and you need to be careful driving and walking because it might be icy.

The most common use of fahrenheit I hear is along the lines of "it's in the 80s today." Very rarely does someone seem to give (or care about) a fahrenheit temperature to the degree, which suggests that the smaller degree size is mostly wasted.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

And it costs a lot more than a pound these days.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[robkeeney]

It's 17F where I am right now. I live where it gets cold. I prefer Fahrenheit.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[mad_ian]

And remember that most of the world doesn't drink milk, because it's a genetic mutation of white western Europeans and their descendants that allows us to digest lactose in any sizeable quantity past childhood.

They may cook with it, bake with it, but they don't drink it. Hell, most of the kids of colour at the local schools are lactose intolerant, which is a real problem when the state says "why the fuck Aren't your kids drinking milk?! We pay a lot of money to ensure they have it, make them drink it!"

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I missing sarcasm here? You're modded insightful so it's worth addressing anyway.

Fahrenheit designed his scale in 1724. They weren't salting the roads and nobody was going fast enough or on a smooth enough surface for road salt to matter.

Road salt doesn't reduce that point to 0 F... you can't maintain the salt concentration that high. It loses effectiveness around 9-5 F. Road ice is dangerous anywhere below freezing because you can't rely on salt being on all parts of the road, so the real condition for warning of dangerous road conditions is 0 C (32 F), and you should get seriously concerned around -4 C (25 F) because that's where salted water tends to run off, dilute itself with newly melted ice and stabilize as skating-rink quality traps.

Hyperthermia starts at 104 F and the real normal body temperature is 98.6 F so it's not even a useful mnemonic.

Deadly and, as you say, *rare* situations are a piss-poor justification for an arbitrary system of measurements. I've also heard that F is more precise because it's about half as big, which is great... why not push that even further and define S, which is degrees in the Stupid system. 1 S is 1/10th of 1 F.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

There is literally no cost in changing.

There's no need to change, just teach both imperial and SI units in school and college. Miles are better than kilometers (smaller numbers on street signs and your speedometer). Fahrenheit is better than Celsius (bigger numbers giving better temperature range). Inch/feet are also useful for many things.

Where SI units shine is anything involving calculations and conversions. mm/cm/m is so easy to convert compared to inch/foot/mile and use in scientific calculations. Specific products can be slowly changed to SI units if there is a benefit.

So the best solution is to use a hybrid units system.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[KozmoStevnNaut]

But you're like to need 250g or 500g or 375g of something. Always cook by weight, never by volume.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[MightyYar]

OK, but its not really germane to my point, which was just an example.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[MercTech]

Which is why, in the US, scientists use metric and everyone else, for normal everyday life, continues to use the convenient units they always have.

Except that most people don't know how to use the old antiquated system.
Is that ounces by weight or by volume? (makes a difference in cooking even)
How many tablespoons in a cup?
Pounds mass or pounds weight... makes a difference in dynamic loading.
How many furlongs in a mile? How many miles in a league?

Go to a grocery in Canada you will see two prices on the contents of the deli counter. A price per pound (traditional) and a price per 100g (price per standard serving size). If you go for a turkey, brisket, or other bulk meat; you pay a price per kilogram. Easy to understand for even a Yank.

      The U.S. is a century overdue in going metric for one bloody good reason; being competitive on the international market.
        BTW, demanding all government offices use A4 size paper instead of the 8.5x11 U.S. standard before there was any A4 paper stocked was a stupid way to turn people off metric altogether. (Jimmy Carter's idea back in the 70s.)

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[sjames]

Actually, I do bake by weight. In pounds and oz.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[sjames]

You may be unaware that folk rules of thumb very rarely go through a $2 million vetting process to make sure autistic language lawyers can't nit-pick it.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[david_thornley]

Other measurements you might want to look at are the multiple definitions of "ton" and "mile". Richard Feynman once was on a ship, and said he could use the wake (I think) to figure out how fast the ship was going. He was about 10% off. After almost everyone had walked away, unimpressed, someone asked him if he'd converted into nautical miles, since after all a knot is one nautical mile per hour. Feynman was disgusted with the measurement system after that.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

> And an inch is about the length of the tip of a thumb

You know people have different thumb sizes, don't you? That tells me nothing.

> and a foot is about as long as a size 10 foot.

Really? And what would be size 10, if you can explain that without mentioning "a foot"?

Can't you see how dumb that is? How is a Japanese supposed to know what is "size 10"? Or an European?

> People overlook the fact that the English system or Engineering system is designed for physical tasks and relate to a human and are easily estimatable.

You cannot build anything without some precision. This is so obvious.

> I would love someone to physically estimate on their body 1mm or 1cm.

We don't estimate at that level, for the same reason you don't use inches for height. We say about 1.60m or 1.80m or 2m. We can use cm but it is more common during more precise measurements. Millimeters are not used for human height, but certainly to measure insects.

> You can't physically approximate and just have to get used to it. It is harder and more abstract.

No, it's not. And people do it all the time. It's not abstract at all. BTW, most objects have human-like sizes like tables (40 or 60 cm x 120 or 160 or 200cm), beds (180 to 200cm) etc. etc. It's quite easy, indeed. You can tell just by looking.

> Granted, for scientific purposes, fine, but, Engineering and construction are better suited to being able to physically approximate something rather than just having to "know how long a centimeter is"

A meter is not that different from a yard and estimates are also likewise done. It's very hard to miss an estimate done with half-meters. I'm positive I can estimate reasonably well things in 10cm intervals (for human-size objects). That's 3 times better resolution than working with feet, BTW, so estimates might be more accurate.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[serviscope_minor]

Yes because being flat-out wrong is totally the same as nit-picky language lawyerising.

A pint here is 20oz not a pound. You are wrong. And imperial is a silly system.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that terribly inconvenient?

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

> But the point of metric is scientific use, not approximation.

That's what _you_ think. And it's wrong.

It's perfectly fine to use approximated meters.

> So in metric something may be 1 meter, or "about a yard" in Standard units.

If you mean "yard" is a standard unti, I beg to digress, since it is a de facto IMHO, but yes, a meter is about a yard.

> But it would be wrong to say something is 1 yard, or "about a meter."

No, it's no wrong. If an object is exactly one yard long, it is about a meter-long. 91.44cm is close enough to a meter for daily conversation.

When I buy something with 3m, though -- e.g. PVC pipes -- I'd better get exactly 300cm (with possibly 1cm error).

> Now tell me what time it is. In metric, since metric is so awesome.

When we talk metric, I suppose you refer to SI, the system of international (but not American!) units. Meter is a length unit. For time, we use "seconds". I suppose hours and minutes are auxiliary units, just like liters can be used when objects are too small for a cubic meter.

Thus your post at 10:41 PM happened at 22 hours and 41 minutes, which amount to 81,660 seconds since the zero hour of December 28. "81,660 seconds" is a SI measure (or "metric").

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[RockDoctor]

That said, I often like to convert volumetric measurements like cups

If "cups" are a volumetric measure, then they're the weirdest volumetric measure out there because they have no defined volume. If I've understood this correctly (and I'll excuse myself by saying that I have had no training in cooking at all, though I did do a 3 month course in the chemistry of food and cooking), as long as you use the same cup to measure your eggs, flour, sugar, diced armadillo, whatever, then you're going to get the same proportions (volumetrically, if not by mass), but the volume of the cup is never defined. So you just use any cup you happen to have to hand, and wash and dry it between every measurement, tripling the length of time you need to gather ingredients for a recipe.

I was quite ambivalent about "customary units" until I had to try to understand that shit during the chemistry course. That was what convinced me that customary units should always be deprecated in favour of their SI equivalents, and should never be used in front of people with a longer life expectancy than yours. As Roy Batty put it, "Wake up! Time to die!"

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

> There's no need to change, just teach both imperial and SI units in school and college.

This is no change, people will keep using bad units because that's what old geezers taught them. In with the new, out with the old.

> Miles are better than kilometers (smaller numbers on street signs and your speedometer).

This is preposterous; it's just like saying kilometers are better because they impart a sense of higher speeds.

60 miles == 100 km (actually, 96 km but there are no speed limits like that).

A metric speedometer, BTW, is equal to a miles' one. You just have a different legend written "km/h" on it, instead of "mph". Not a big deal.

> Fahrenheit is better than Celsius (bigger numbers giving better temperature range).

Can you write that after saying the opposite above?

> Inch/feet are also useful for many things.

No, they are not. They're just a hindrance for those not used to them. And they make communications of values harder.

> Where SI units shine is anything involving calculations and conversions. mm/cm/m is so easy to convert compared to inch/foot/mile and use in scientific calculations.

That's what we've been saying all the time! Except it's not just scientific uses -- you can do easy conversions in your head, all the time.

> Specific products can be slowly changed to SI units if there is a benefit.

If there's a benefit in one product, there is the same benefit in all.

> So the best solution is to use a hybrid units system.

You cannot have two standards -- that's basic. Hybrid systems are worse than Imperial. Use metric only!

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[sjames]

Not at all.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[sjames]

Since imperial is a silly system, perhaps it's best to go with the 16 oz pint that weighs a pound. OOOhh, 1oz = 1oz, so complicated!

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Pseudonym]

I agree, it works with the climate. It still may be a shock.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[serviscope_minor]

Since imperial is a silly system

It is.

perhaps it's best to go with the 16 oz pint that weighs a pound.

no the best thing is to go metric rather than the system where a pint differs by 20% and...

OOOhh, 1oz = 1oz,

I assume you mean floz since we're talking about volume here in which case 1floz = 0.96976 floz

http://www.metric-conversions....

so complicated!

Indeed!

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Pseudonym]

I thought it was clear that this was a joke. In many countries, beer is served cold to the point where you can't discern the subtle notes of a good ale. British drinkers often make fun of this.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[Anonymous Coward]

> Imperial is pretty simple, especially after switching to the 25.4 mm inch. A gallon has 10 lbs of water in it (at 50F or such) which of course translates to 160 fl oz, just like 10 lbs has 160 ounces in it.

As a metric/SI user, I wonder if we have different definitions of the word "simple."

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[sjames]

1 Fl oz weighs 1 oz. 16 oz = 1 pint = 1 pound.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[serviscope_minor]

1 Fl oz weighs 1 oz.

No, one floz of water at a specific temperature weighs 1oz. The temperature in question is different in different regons, so the volume of 1floz varies.

16 oz = 1 pint = 1 pound.

Except where 20oz = 1 pint = not one pound.

So IOW, it doesn't apply the world round.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Fahrenheit designed his scale in 1724. They weren't salting the roads and nobody was going fast enough or on a smooth enough surface for road salt to matter.

I didn't say it was by design. It's a convenient fallout of the arbitrary choices he made when coming up with a scale for his freshly-invented mercury-in-glass thermometer.

Road salt doesn't reduce that point to 0 F. Yes, but it's close. (The scale was originally designed with ammonium chloride, anyhow.) you can't maintain the salt concentration that high. Not a problem: They distribute gravel-sized chunks of salt, which take a while to dissolve even in running water. These melt randomly located and sized holes in the ice, which gives it a non-smooth texture (for traction) and breaks it up (for plowing aside).

Hyperthermia starts at 104 F which (with a basal metabolisim equivalent to running a minimum of a 75-watt bulb in your guts and head) you reach real-soon-now when the temperature is about 100F and you're dehydrated and the real normal body temperature is 98.6 F No, it's not. That's the typical measurement under the tongue - somewhat cooler than the core of the body, thanks largely to mechanisms to cool the brain. Subtract about a degree (97.6) for axilary (underarm) rather than oral, add about a degree (99.6) for rectal - which still isn't the hottest part of your core.

Yes, they're both approximate, so you have to use care as they're approached, as well as when they're exceeded. But how nice that a round number tags the (even if approximate) transition into unusual danger.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[DethLok]

"... social history and social inertia will ensure that not everything at the human scale will be measured or described in metric". Except in every other country that is not the USA, sure.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[suutar]

A cup is supposed to be well defined - 8 fluid ounces, or the volume of 8 ounces (mass) of water. Two cups is a pint, which is the volume of 16 ounces (one pound) of water, hence the saying "a pint's a pound the world 'round".

At some time in the past it was probably the way you describe, much as the foot or cubit was determined by whoever was around. But for as far back as I can remember they've had objective definitions.

Re:Like someone else illustrated

[suutar]

well, until you specify what's in the brine, the freezing point is still not well defined...

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[RockDoctor]

hence the saying "a pint's a pound the world 'round".

I've heard this one from Americans before. It's true IF AND ONLY IF "the word `round" EQUALS "America".

In Britain, the back of our log tables, approved by the exam boards for use in exams, included definitions of various units which you might need to know in exams. From that, I memorised that a gallon is the volume of ten pounds of fresh water at NTP (also defined, in centigrade!), and that there are eight pints per gallon. Therefore, a pint of fresh water weighs 1.25 lb (at the Earth's surface, of course).

"a pint's a pound" is a great example of why "customary" units need strangling in this generation.

Re: Like someone else illustrated

[suutar]

Yeah, in 1824 the Imperial system was brought into play, replacing the Queen Anne system. Since that was after the US broke away, we didn't follow along in that changeover. I'm pretty sure the saying dates from before that.

Quarter Pounder

[Anonymous Coward]

VINCENT And in Paris, you can buy beer at MacDonald's. And you know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?
JULES They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese?
VINCENT No, they got the metric system there, they wouldn't know what a Quarter Pounder is.
JULES What'd they call it?
VINCENT Royale with Cheese.
JULES (repeating) Royale with Cheese.

- Pulp Fiction

Re:Quarter Pounder

[Anonymous Coward]

The world knows what a pound is. It's about half a kilogram. That's the thing though: There are many definitions of a pound. In Germany, a pound is exactly 500g, the "lb" pound is 453.59237g, and there are many others.

Re:Quarter Pounder

[Schmorgluck]

Fun fact: the actual name is "Royal Cheese", not "Royal with Cheese". I'm not sure how Quentin Tarantino managed to get it wrong.

Re:Quarter Pounder

[thinkwaitfast]

Information that 14,000/7,7000,000,000, 1.8182e-5% of people know, use or care.

Re:Quarter Pounder

[Anonymous Coward]

People know that a pound is about half a kilo. That's as much as anyone needs to know about it, and that it is an antiquated measure. The rest just illustrates those two points.

Re:Quarter Pounder

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is that Quentin Tarantino does not, as a rule, concern himself overly much with accuracy.

Re:Quarter Pounder

[Anonymous Coward]

Or with making good movies.

Re:Quarter Pounder

[Anonymous Coward]

Measurement itself is antiquated.

You: Computer, how far is it to home?

Computer: 1hour and 11 minutes

You: Computer, what size screw do I need to fix my toaster?

Computer: sku 2485611-ad4b. It has already been ordered from amazon and will be at you door by 8pm tomorrow

Obligatory

[nospam007]

Arrrrgh!

Since nobody bothered to say it yet.

Re:Obligatory

[serviscope_minor]

Arrrrgh!

Is that a cry of dismay over how you're on the crazy imperial system still, or did you misspell "arrrrrr!"?

Re:Obligatory

[networkBoy]

he's recursively dismayed at misspelling "arrrrr!"

Re:Obligatory

[Aighearach]

Might as well, I saw something about Pirates of the Caribbean, and "America's Metric System" and then something about McDonalds.

Now, as an American I know that America does not have a metric system. There is such a thing as The metric system, but there is not an American Metric System. The metric system is a form of torture that is used on children, children who know darn well that outside of the schoolhouse adults will refuse to speak to them in Metric, and if they try it they'll be looked at with suspicion, and birtherism.

And if it is supposed to have units from McDonalds, I'm gonna call it right there and say that it is actually a European conspiracy to slander our good nation, and we should probably invade and pillage all their cheese as punishment.

Re:Obligatory

[Applehu Akbar]

The one good thing about the nation's drug problem is that it has introduced metric weights and volumes to our young people, especially in the inner city.

Re:Obligatory

[meglon]

It's a timeless question forever asked, right up until someone gets eaten.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Obligatory

[R3d M3rcury]

I'm not saying it's pirates...but it's pirates.

Re:Obligatory

[msauve]

Arrrgh, yes. Because "a McDonald's Quarter Pounder might be known as the McDonald's 113-Grammer, John Henry's 9-pound hammer would be 4.08 kilograms, and any 800-pound gorillas in the room would likely weigh 362 kilos", while (failing in) an attempt to show knowledge of the SI system, is severely lacking in basic math.

For colloquial measurements, no one would do conversions with 3 digits of precision. It might be a Hecto-Burger, or a 4 kilo hammer, or a 400 kilo gorilla. (does anyone say "kilogram" instead of "kilo" when the context makes it obvious that the reference is to weight [or mass, for the truly pedantic]?) Trying to play the 3 digit conversion game indicates an agenda designed to make it seem the SI system is more complicated than imperial units. Hint: it's not.

Re:Obligatory

[ceoyoyo]

"Trying to play the 3 digit conversion game indicates an agenda designed to make it seem the SI system is more complicated than imperial units."

When seen here on Slashdot, I'll give you that maybe half the time. The other half here, and pretty much every time everywhere else is simply having no idea how significant digits work.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

For colloquial measurements, no one would do conversions with 3 digits of precision. It might be a Hecto-Burger

Or more likely, you will have to make a choice (gasp!) between a 100g, 160g or 200 gram burger.

BTW, we all say 'kilo' to mean 'kilograms.' But then again we do say 'kilometers' in full.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

For those who don't get the reference

Re:Obligatory

[wafflemonger]

For the truly pedantic, it would be measured in Newtons. Your Quarter Pounder would be a McDonald's Newton.

These are the same folks

[Anonymous Coward]

who now are trying to monopolize science fiction movies.

Now we find out Disney is to blame for the Mars Climate Orbiter disaster too.

Americas bitter hatred

[rsilvergun]

of spending money on infrastructure is what kept metric from taking over. If it's one thing we're good at, it's being short sighted cheapskates.

Re:Americas bitter hatred

[Nutria]

Be that as it may, we hate the Metric system because freedom isn't divisible by 10!!

Re:Americas bitter hatred

[Aighearach]

First they want you to use easily converted units, the next thing you know they're checking if your thumb is on the scale, and reading their receipt!

It stifles creativity.

Re:Americas bitter hatred

[Hal_Porter]

Well look on the bright side. A government powerful enough to force people to use metric is powerful enough to do a lot of really awful stuff

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The French Republican Calendar (French: calendrier républicain franÃais), also commonly called the French Revolutionary Calendar (calendrier révolutionnaire franÃais), was a calendar created and implemented during the French Revolution, and used by the French government for about 12 years from late 1793 to 1805

What was going on during those 12 years? Well they started very badly indeed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

And only ended when Napoleon made himself First Consul

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Be happy you're still free to use non metric measurements. It's a sign that the US war of independence didn't end up like the French revolution.

Re:Americas bitter hatred

[Nutria]

A hunk of meat sold by the 16 oz pound -- who's prime factorization is 2^5 -- is much easier to divide into smaller bits than one sold a measure of 10 units, who's prime factorization is 2 and 5.

Re:Americas bitter hatred

[Mr D from 63]

Metric is fine for labs and label. For discussion, too many syllables. Utterly unpoetic.

Re: Americas bitter hatred

[Anonymous Coward]

In the rest of the world meat is priced per kg, with small chunks measured out in grammes, giving (2^3).(5^3), if that kind of thing really matters to you.

Re: Americas bitter hatred

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you're proving his point. That's much harder. And yes, it does matter to people. Being dismissive of that is why proponents of the metric system don't make much progress in the US, at least for household use.

Re:Americas bitter hatred

[_merlin]

Australia managed to switch to metric without that kind of upheaval. The two aren't necessarily tied together.

Re:Americas bitter hatred

[AmiMoJo]

This is the worst argument against the meric system I've ever read.

Re:Americas bitter hatred

[jrumney]

of spending money on infrastructure is what kept metric from taking over

And stupid articles with claims like "John Henry's 9-pound hammer would be 4.08 kilograms" trying to scare people away from metric.

John Henry's hammer would be 4 kg, the 900 pound gorilla in the room would be 300 or 400kg, and a Quarter Pounder would obviously be a Royale with Cheese when converted to metric. None of these terms calls for a high mathematical precision, and are already rounded in imperial, so would equally be rounded in metric units. 120g would actually be closer to the actual 4.25 ounce weight of a McD's meat pattie than quarter pound is anyway.

Re: Americas bitter hatred

[Anonymous Coward]

We already knew that; the prime factor of 16 isn't 2^5 but 2^4, having 5 factors. 1000 has 16 factors so has far more ways to divide it. For some unknown reason all this is important to someone with no math skill whatsoever.

Re:Americas bitter hatred

[Hal_Porter]

Why don't you go and guillotine some more starving poor people, Jacobin scum? I'll stay here with my quarter pounder and a pint of ale.

Re:Americas bitter hatred

[serviscope_minor]

Why don't you go and guillotine some more starving poor people, Jacobin scum? I'll stay here with my quarter pounder and a pint of ale.

He's British, so he has ACTUAL pints of actual ale. Not those wierd 4/5 and 2/5 pint measyres you sell in the US.

Anyway I do agree your post should win some sort of prize for the silliest anti-metric argument ever. I would say it's a most excellent piece of satire.

Re:Americas bitter hatred

[Hal_Porter]

It required some pretty heavy handed stuff in the UK, namely recognizing the supremacy of EU law over UK law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

So long as this country remains a member of the European Union then the laws of this country are subject to the doctrine of the primacy of community law... The passing of the [European Communities Act] 1972 meant that European legislation became part of our legislation.... This country... has joined this European club and by so doing has agreed to be bound by the rules and regulations of the club..."

Also ministers can legislate by decree

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Some statutory instruments are made under provisions of Acts which allow the instrument to change the parent Act itself, or to change other primary legislation. These provisions, allowing primary legislation to be amended by secondary legislation, are known as Henry VIII clauses, because an early example of such a power was conferred on King Henry VIII by the Statute of Proclamations 1539. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Select Committee of the House of Lords issued a report concerning the use and drafting of such clauses, an issue its chairman remarked "goes right to the heart of the key constitutional question of the limits of executive power". Such clauses have often proved highly controversial - for instance, that in the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 which prompted the aforementioned report, and the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006.

Lord Judge spoke strongly against such clauses whilst he was Lord Chief Justice:

You can be sure that when these Henry VIII clauses are introduced they will always be said to be necessary. William Pitt warned us how to treat such a plea with disdain. "Necessity is the justification for every infringement of human liberty: it is the argument of tyrants, the creed of slaves."

Like I say Europe level government with the power to enforce this sort of thing on nations has too much power. I think you could make the same argument that the US Federal government shouldn't have that power either.

Luckily the UK is leaving the EU and likely moving to something like the free trade agreement arrangement with it like the one Canada has. So it would need to comply with EU labelling rules for exports to the EU, just like it complies with US labelling rules when it exports there. However it hopefully won't prosecute people for not following EU rules when they sell things in the UK.

This is why people like Johnson and Gove are concerned about 'divergence', unlike crypto Remoaners like Hammond

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

Re:Americas bitter hatred

[Anonymous Coward]

He's British, so he has ACTUAL pints of actual ale.

Yeah, but AmiMojo's a feminist, and I cannot see a feminist drinking ale, or any kind of beer.

Beer represents rape culture after all. History is full of men and boys hanging out in rowdy bars drinking beer, telling sexist jokes to each other, talking about their adventures with various women. A lot of rape happened because of alcohol as well, it's probably why feminists a century ago pushed for Prohibition.

Then there's beer commercials, seemingly trying to tell men that if they drink their brand of beer, beautiful women will want to have sex with you.

I could go on, but I'm sure a feminist can do better.

Re:Americas bitter hatred

[Anonymous Coward]

Why isn't this a problem in the rest of the world, where meat is simply sold per kg?

Re:Americas bitter hatred

[serviscope_minor]

Yeah, but AmiMojo's a feminist,

So am I.

and I cannot see a feminist drinking ale, or any kind of beer.

OK, that's a bit odd.

Beer represents rape culture after all. History is full of men and boys hanging out in rowdy bars drinking beer

Oh cute! You think that history is basically like modern America but ye-olde.

Re:Americas bitter hatred

[Anonymous Coward]

So am I.

My condolences.

OK, that's a bit odd.

How is that odd? Boycotting products and services based on any supposed links to things your movement doesn't like is bread and butter in the current year. Both feminists and MRAs do it.

I saying it's the other way around: it would be odd if a feminist like AmiMojo drink ale, as that supports the beer industry, which has a long history of being sexist.

Oh cute! You think that history is basically like modern America but ye-olde.

Nah, I don't think that at all, but nice try telling me what I think.

For claiming to be a feminist, you sure sound like one of them ANTI-feminist who keep trying to tell AmiMojo what/how he thinks (for the record, no, I'm not telling AmiMojo what/how he thinks, I'm just saying it would be odd for a feminist/him to drink ale or support the sexist beer industry)

It's also interesting that you associate men and boys being rowdy in a bar with "modern America". I'm not associating this negative stereotype onto any particular culture or race. That's all you buddy. Looks to me somebody is a closet bigot against Americans

Re:Americas bitter hatred

[serviscope_minor]

How is that odd?

Because, as it transpired you have no idea about the history of beer.

I saying it's the other way around: it would be odd if a feminist like AmiMojo drink ale, as that supports the beer industry, which has a long history of being sexist

Tell me, wht sexism has my local brewery (the Brixton Brewery) been accused of?

Nah, I don't think that at all, but nice try telling me what I think.

Your portrayal of history is basically like a ye-olde version of what you know rather than anything approaching accurate.

Here's a free tip: if you don't want people to insist tht you think inaccurate things then try not saying those inaccurate things. Otherwise the things you say and your blustering protestations will all sound rather silly.

Re:Americas bitter hatred

[david_thornley]

Jacobins didn't guillotine starving people. That's pointless. They used it on nobility, the rich, and former allies.

what if they adopted British system for currency:D

[kiviQr]

It would be interesting to have 12 cents in a dollar; 3 dollars would make a 1 yard bill; 1760 yard dollars would make a 1 mile bill.

How Caribbean Pirates Hijacked America's Metric...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because the article is using a clickbait title doesn't mean it should be used here

I find it strangely ironic

[SlaveToTheGrind]

that there were only two other articles between this one and the one on people evolving out of conspiratorial thought patterns.

Re:I find it strangely ironic

[Aighearach]

I can explain all the conspiracies right now! Sit down, Dear Child, listen and wake.

They want you to click on it. All of the conspiracies, they're all secretly the same conspiracy! All of them, from the beginning of time to the end of time, all the conspiracies are to get you to click on it. Whatever it is. As long as you still don't know, they haven't gotten to you yet.

Never click on it. Never.

It is just like in Snow Crash.

Re: I find it strangely ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

I now have mental diarrhea. Itâ(TM)s malodorous.

It's not so bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

America is inching its way towards the metric system.

Re:It's not so bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then we can be as affected as the EU! It's soooo easy to divide things into (groups of, piles of, etc.) based on halves. Makes it easier for farmers. You know, those people who were most of the country back then. Arrogant Frenchies in their ecoles. Look at Frenchia now. Just look at it.

Re:It's not so bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Arrogant Frenchies in their ecoles. Look at Frenchia now. Just look at it.

Whatever they may be, they didn't vote for Trump.

Touché!

Huh?

[Richard_at_work]

If the United States were more like the rest of the world, a McDonald's Quarter Pounder might be known as the McDonald's 113-Grammer

Uh, not all that much - in the UK, where the metric system is a required thing by law, the McDonalds Quarter Pounder is *still* called the Quarter Pounder, because thats its product name. Its pre-cooked weight may be given in metric, but that doesn't alter the product name. In France its the Royal for the same reason, thats its product name.

In the UK, you can still buy a 64Oz Club Hammer or a 16Oz Rubber Mallet, and a 800-pound gorilla is still a 800-pound gorilla - again, the requirement for metric doesn't change these things.

The speech from Pulp Fiction is cool and all, its just not so much based in reality.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Grew up in a metric country, now live in the US. Nothing wrong with the imperial system here, I'm lovin' it.

Re:Huh?

[serviscope_minor]

In the UK, you can still buy a 64Oz Club Hammer or a 16Oz Rubber Mallet, and a 800-pound gorilla is still a 800-pound gorilla

Not sure I've seen hammers sold by the Oz here. And the 800lb gorilla is an adopted American phrase: when we condescend to do imperial, we don't half-arse it so we measure body weight in stone.

Re:Huh?

[Richard_at_work]

In the UK, you can still buy a 64Oz Club Hammer or a 16Oz Rubber Mallet, and a 800-pound gorilla is still a 800-pound gorilla

Not sure I've seen hammers sold by the Oz here.

Here you go, B&Q - http://www.diy.com/departments...

And Wickes as well - http://www.wickes.co.uk/Produc...

And the 800lb gorilla is an adopted American phrase: when we condescend to do imperial, we don't half-arse it so we measure body weight in stone.

Its still the same, regardless of the reason.

Re:Huh?

[serviscope_minor]

Here you go,

Interesting. I got mine from RS who sell them by the gram. There seems to be a split between engineering and trades on this one.

Its still the same, regardless of the reason

It's not a common phrase. I've never heard someone use it in conversation (as opposed to on the internet).

Re:Huh?

[jfdavis668]

The US doesn't use the imperial system. It uses the English system. The Imperial system wasn't created until 1824, after the US split from England. They never made the change. Though the names are the same, some of the units of measure are different.

Re:Huh?

[thinkwaitfast]

It's required by law in the US also.

Re:Huh?

[Pfhorrest]

Technically the US uses its own customary units, which like the British Imperial units are derived from the older English units but not exactly the same.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

And the 800lb gorilla is an adopted American phrase: when we condescend to do imperial, we don't half-arse it so we measure body weight in stone.

Luckily, there's an easy to remember conversion for that:

One 60-stone gorilla == one 800lb gorilla holding a bag of sixty 2/3lb stones

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I work heavy construction. Building roads, highways, etc... All the plans are in feet and inches. There were INCENTIVES to do everything in metric, but the final field plans were always converted to Engineering or Architectural units. The highway projects at the design level would be in metric to get the monetary incentive, but even that now has been removed as of a couple of years ago. Nothing on heavy construction comes out in metric anymore other than old plans that are carryovers from that period. And the first this we do is scale it by 3937/1200.

There was no legal requirement. Plus, the legal drinking age is majority. Everyone went to 21 to get the national highway funding. Incentives, not dictum.

Re:Huh?

[aliquis]

But if no-one was really using it I assume it would had been a 125 gram burger, or two 75 gram, or one 100 gram or whatever.

And the gorilla would be 400 kg or extinct.

Re:Huh?

[NicknameUnavailable]

Technically the US uses its own customary units, which like the British Imperial units are derived from the older English units but not exactly the same.

That may be, but we still get to call it the English system because reparations.

Re:Huh?

[jrumney]

The major difference between them seems to be that the English changes were driven by demand for bigger glasses of beer.

Re:Huh?

[drinkypoo]

It's definitely weird to buy a hammer weighing more than one pound by the ounce, though. Here we call those a one-pound hammer, a five-pound sledge, etc. I guess that's confusing to people who went and named their currency unit the same as a unit of weight, though. Except, you know, ounces are used for both weight and volume. Is that a big/small hammer, or a light/heavy hammer? America wins again.

Re:Huh?

[serviscope_minor]

Except, you know, ounces are used for both weight and volume.

Well, FlOz, and true, but for whatever reason, FlOz have essentially vanished here. You see them in old recipe books, and in graduations on dual ystem measuring jugs, but no one ever uses them.

I think a large part is we made heavier use of weight based measures over volumetric ones for dry goods: no one here ever used a cup of flour, they used some number of weight ounces back in the Imperial days.

Of course beer is still sold by the imperial (not American) pint and half pint, and that's unlikely to change.

I guess that's confusing to people who went and named their currency unit the same as a unit of weight, though.

Yes, in a word. We tended to use the phrase "pounds worth" back then to disambiguate where necessary.

Is that a big/small hammer, or a light/heavy hammer?

N grams or kilos I'd guess?

Re:Huh?

[ebvwfbw]

They passed a law that the US had to go metric in the 1970s. Didn't happen. Everything would have to change. Every socket, every scale, every everything that has a measure. Recipes.. it's a mess. How much is a cup of sugar in metric? Is that a dry or wet measure? and on and on...

I can see it happening in my lifetime though. Today if you buy a Chevy, most of the nuts and bolts are metric. I'd be surprised if you could find a standard bolt on the whole car. Hardware stores have plenty of metric stuff today. However I have to admit, SAE is still king.

Metric is nothing more than a string with knots tied in it anyhow. A meter was supposed to be from the North Pole to the equator div 1 million or something and now we know that isn't even right. So it's just someone else's unit. Worse, it's a French unit. We should just give up on it. Stay standard.

What's all this about this "metric" system?

[Anonymous Coward]

The metric system is the tool of the devil!! My car gets 40 rods to the hog's head, and that's the way I likes it!! Now, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.......

Re:What's all this about this "metric" system?

[jfdavis668]

40 rods is just one furlong

Re:What's all this about this "metric" system?

[kenai_alpenglow]

Thankfully the head came from a veeeeery small hog, so that's ok.

Re:What's all this about this "metric" system?

[Immerman]

That's okay, the hogshead is actually moonshine.

No soft metrics!

[duckintheface]

If you really want to see the US move to the metric system, stop using soft metrics. People in the US think the metric system is complicated because they are always being told to convert from English to Metric measure, with the metric being non integral. No, a 9 lb hammer would not be 4.08 kilograms. it would be 4 kilograms. And a Quarter Pounder would be a 100 Grammer. If you want to think in metric, start with integer metric measures and don't worry about conversion.

I remember when Jimmy Carter was trying to move the US to metric in 1977, I saw a giant sign that said 1 inch equals 2.54 cm. Think Metric! At that moment I knew metric was dead in the US.

Re:No soft metrics!

[nukenerd]

r when Jimmy Carter was trying to move the US to metric in 1977, I saw a giant sign that said 1 inch equals 2.54 cm. Think Metric! At that moment I knew metric was dead in the US.

It is dead in that the centimetre is a deprecated unit in the SI system, which is what you should be adopting. The SI base length is a metre, and units derived from the base should be multiples of, or divisions by, 1000. Hence the next unit smaller than a meter should be a millimetre, and the next unit larger should be the kilometre. I work in an engineering design office and we never use centimeters, which is a unit for dressmakers if for anything.

Re:No soft metrics!

[mark-t]

I think you got that backwards. Jimmy Carter killed the move to the metric system. The initial plan to move the US over to metric was made in 1975, and was axed in '77, afaik.

Re:No soft metrics!

[CanadianMacFan]

In your field the centimetre might be dead but it's not a dead unit in the SI system. It's used all of the time in Canada. It's a perfect unit because people can visualize what 1 cm is. It's harder to visualize 10 mm or 0.01 m. And for people that are used to inches it's the closest unit.

And if the centimetre is dead then the centilitre would be dead for the same reasoning. While not in use in Canada (we use the millilitre) the centilitre is sometimes used for small volumes in Europe. I recently bought some bottles to store home made vinegar and they were made in Italy. The sticker said the volume was 50 cl, not 500 ml. You can see it used on some cans of pop.

Re:No soft metrics!

[johannesg]

It is dead in that the centimetre is a deprecated unit in the SI system, which is what you should be adopting. The SI base length is a metre, and units derived from the base should be multiples of, or divisions by, 1000. Hence the next unit smaller than a meter should be a millimetre, and the next unit larger should be the kilometre. I work in an engineering design office and we never use centimeters, which is a unit for dressmakers if for anything.

Nonsense. There's nothing in SI that says prefixes like centi or deci should not be used; if they are a good match for what you're measuring, by all means use them.

Re:No soft metrics!

[Pseudonym]

I live in a SI country. The customary units for everything use whatever scale prefix makes the most sense.

Cans, bottles, and glasses are measured in millilitres (pronunced "mil" for short), and reservoirs are measured in megalitres. Road signs are in kilometres. Weather reports give air pressure in hectopascals. The energy content of food is measured in kilojoules.

We cope.

Re:No soft metrics!

[Hans Lehmann]

The national shift to the metric system was still going strong during the Carter years. It was pressure from the Reagan White House, along with general public reluctance, that killed it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Reagan was dead set on killing many of Carter's goals (energy conservation, the metric system) much like Trump is dead set against anything that Obama ever did.

Re:No soft metrics!

[dryeo]

But the definition of an inch is 25.4 mm or 2.54 cm, even America switched over to the modern inch back in the fifties and only kept their old weird inch for surveying.
As for things like the quarter pounder. We've been metric in Canada since the mid '70's, McDonalds still sells the quarter pounder, hammers are still measured in ounces, we still buy lumber such as 2x4's or 4x8 sheets of plywood, the grocery stores advertise prices in pounds (with kg in small print) though the receipt does show the metric measure that the scales actually use..
The biggest weirdness is the shortage of Imperial fluid measures. Containers used to be generally 1 litre or 4 litres or originally 4.54 litres etc but now they're often weird sizes such as 3.78 litres or 941 ml and sometimes they even call it a gallon but it only has 128 fl oz in it and they're weird ounces. An imperial gallon is 10 lbs of water (at 50F IIRC) and contains 160 fl oz which each weigh an ounce if pure water at the right temp.
Reading this page, it is funny how many Americans think they use Imperial measures when they use English measures (or Canadian in the case of the inch)

Re:No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please stop calling them "English" units; we haven't used them in England since before I was born.

Re:No soft metrics!

[bickerdyke]

And here's the beauty of the metric system: Even if mm instead of cm should be used as a kind of "style guide" you still can use any other decimal fraction/multiple prefix (if you have a reason to do so) and converting is as easy as adding a 0 or slashing a decimal.

Re: No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, metrics are a pain because you can't evenly divide 10 by 2, 3, 4, and 6. People who advocate all metric obviously don't do much woodworking or crafts.

  It's great to be able to halve an inch, and get an answer as simple as 1/2, with integers in both numerator and denominator. And then do it again, and again, and again, with equally simple results. Or to divide an inch by four, with nicely simple fractions. Or have the choice when working with a foot square of dividing into so many different integer inch blocks. Metrics for that? Ick.

Re:No soft metrics!

[mrbester]

Imperial measures *are* English measures, since we're the ones that had the Empire. A US gallon is 3.78l.

It is funny how many Americans think they use Imperial measures when they use US measures.

Re:No soft metrics!

[u801e]

And a Quarter Pounder would be a 100 Grammer.

IIRC, it's actually called a Royal burger without reference to the weight in countries that use SI units.

If you want to think in metric, start with integer metric measures and don't worry about conversion.

With regards to soft drinks, they've done this for quite a long time (2 L size). Interestingly enough, convenience stores used to sell 20 fl oz size soft drinks, but a couple of years ago, they changed it to 500 mL (20 fl oz is about 591 mL). But they print 16.9 oz on the package rather than 500 mL for some odd reason.

Re:No soft metrics!

[kenai_alpenglow]

To be honest, the number of Americans who've mentioned to me they've used "Imperial measures" (or not) is a big, fat 0. When they say "Gallon", they probably don't care what gallon it is. And those who do, don't care. It just happens to be a convenient measure, nothing more. That's likely the main reason common day use of non-SI units hasn't taken hold--inertia. Inches/feet don't bother me (I'm a woodworker). Wait to you throw things in like 4/4 and 8/4 and bdft in the mix, if you want some conversion fun. On the other hand, TSP and TBSP and all that nonsense can go in the garbage (not trash) can ASAP!

Re:No soft metrics!

[dryeo]

Don't worry, England hasn't been a country since before you were born.

Re:No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

> I remember when Jimmy Carter was trying to move the US to metric in 1977, I saw a giant sign that said 1 inch equals 2.54 cm. Think Metric! At that moment I knew metric was dead in the US.

Well, as a disclaimer, I'll advance that I find Americans dumb, in the sense they're not against change -- being an enterprising people and all -- but they are against learning (which totally deserves the "dumb" label).

Now, I think you might have reached an important root of the problem: it's hard to leave the American units because they are hard (it's a tautology but I'll explain).

I can say all length can be measured in meters and its super/subunits: kilometer, centimeter, millimeter, nanometer etc. One phrase to describe one dimension.

Or I can say:

- one inch is 2.54cm or 25.4mm;
- one feet is 30.48cm;
- one yard is 91.44cm;
- one mile is 1.61km or 1609.34m or 160.934cm;

See, Americans have a hard time leaving American units because there are many departing points for conversions, albeit just one target (the meter).

They're doomed unless they muster the energy to mend their ways; but alas, they're prisoners of the cost trap -- just like Trump cannot understand working together to make a better world, if it'll cost anything to Americans.

Too near-sighted, I should say.

Re: No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, we don't leave it because Standard units are convenient and easy to manipulate, and make more intuitive sense.
For example, clocks. Even in hardcore Metric countries, people don't bother with metric time.

Metric is great for scientific purposes, but it's just not that important for most everyday uses, which are approximations not precise measurements.

Re: No soft metrics!

[Immerman]

Neither can most us customary units. What's 1/6 of an inch? 1/3? Ditto cups or pounds.

The only time you get nice multiples of 3 is when converting feet to inches - and even then you need a nice even number for it to work out. Whats one third of 1'2"?

Meanwhile, if you're using metric to measure something on the same scale, 1 foot = 300mm (near enough - there's nothing magical about a foot), which is indeed easily divisible by 2,3,4,5,6,10,12,25, etc.

Most importantly - any math you need to do in metric is simple integer arithmetic, while in US customary you have to constantly juggle mixed fractions in your head to accomplish anything. You can't even fall back to simpler improper fractions because there's not a ruler on the planet with a 317/8ths label.

What's 1/4 of 37-1/2 inches? Versus 1/4 of 950mm? Or scaling up - you want 7 shelves 13-3/4" apart - what's the total distance? Now try the same thing with 350mm per shelf. If 1/4 inch accuracy is enough, then all your metric measurements can be rounded to multiples of 5. At 1/8th inch, they can all be even. Keeps the math easy. About the only claim I've heard where customary actually has an advantage is that you can specify the precision along with the measurement - but realistically you rarely hear people give measurements of 2-32/64ths or 37-0/16ths

And frankly, weight and volume are an even uglier mess in customary. Not to mention the endless confusion and headaches caused by the fact that we measure things by weight rather than mass, rather than letting the scale do the conversion into a far more general unit for us.

Re:No soft metrics!

[OmegaWolf747]

I can remember being taught the metric system in grade school in the 80s and being utterly flummoxed by it.

Re:No soft metrics!

[jrumney]

England has been a country for around 1100 years. Today it is still one of the four countries that make up the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Re: No soft metrics!

[fj3k]

If you divide an inch by 3 you get 0.333333333333 inches! Whereas, if you divide a cm by 2 you get 1/2 cm or 5mm. Why can't you double-standard, cherry-picking imperial supporters see that!

Re:No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because both Carter and Obama share one characteristic: both terrible presidencies.

Carter has arguably done much better afterward; much like I have a little hope for Obama, once he loses the unearned air of superiority that he has.

It is best we move onward.

Re:No soft metrics!

[dryeo]

In 1707 England united with Scotland and became the country of Great Britain with a shared Parliament and government.
I guess it depends on how you define country. I'm defining it as being under a government such as the Parliament of the UK which currently rules the nation of England or in other words, a political unit. Note that the UK isn't even a Federal setup where all the constitution parts have sovereignty of some type like where I live.

Re:No soft metrics!

[jrumney]

which currently rules the nation of England

I'd really advise you to stop using your own definitions of words if you are going to get into arguments like this one. Officially, England is a country. It is not however a nation for purposes of membership of United Nations.

Note that the UK isn't even a Federal setup where all the constitution parts have sovereignty of some type like where I live.

With the exception of England, they are.

Re:No soft metrics!

[kiviQr]

Metric is not dead in US - dollars are used in a metric way (cents, dollars)

Re: No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a quarter pounder in New Zealand.

There's probably also a tiny asterisk next to it saying it's precooked weight

Re:No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

Singapore also uses metric and mcdonalds sells (or used to as of a couple of weeks ago) the quarter pounder.

Its just a marketing name anyway.

Re: No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

Great Britain isn't a country. Nor is the UK. England is a country. Scotland is a country. 1707 unified the crowns and parliaments, but didn't stop England and Scotland being countries in their own right. Northern Ireland is also a country, being part of the UK, but not part of Great Britain as defined in 1707. Wales is at least a principality legally, but operates legally largely as a block with England legally, so whether or not it legally counts as a country I'm not sure.

Re:No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

And if the centimetre is dead then the centilitre would be dead for the same reasoning. While not in use in Canada (we use the millilitre) the centilitre is sometimes used for small volumes in Europe. I recently bought some bottles to store home made vinegar and they were made in Italy. The sticker said the volume was 50 cl, not 500 ml. You can see it used on some cans of pop.

What, no decilitres? A while back in Zurich/Switzerland a couple of colleagues and I where ordering beer with lunch in a cafe and where asked what size we wanted. Upon further inquiry, the waitress mentioned choices of 2 "deci", 3 "deci" etc. (pronounced in the Italian way - DEH-tchi). :-)

Re:No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

It is dead in that the centimetre is a deprecated unit in the SI system, which is what you should be adopting.

The centimetre is not a unit. The unit is the metre. Centi is a prefix. That prefix is not deprecated, just like kilo will never be deprecated.

The SI base length is a metre, and units derived from the base should be multiples of, or divisions by, 1000. Hence the next unit smaller than a meter should be a millimetre, and the next unit larger should be the kilometre. I work in an engineering design office and we never use centimeters, which is a unit for dressmakers if for anything.

And the next prefix is the mega, but no one says the US is 6 Mm from Europe. Clearly every day usage does not entirely correlate with engineering use. Hell, astronomers and astrophysicists use light-years, or astronomical units to measure distances, they don't use millimeters. That alone should tell you that the standard unit will vary from field to field. In Europe most people will think and use centimeters in their every day life. Just like they use centiliters. A bottle of wine has 75 cL, not 750 mL. A can of coke has 33 cL, not 330 mL. Even if the can says 330 mL -- and I'm not sure if it does -- people will stick to the shorter version (thirty three is smaller than three hundred thirty), that gives the meaningful value.

Re:No soft metrics!

[KozmoStevnNaut]

And a Quarter Pounder would be a 100 Grammer.

IIRC, it's actually called a Royal burger without reference to the weight in countries that use SI units.

It's a Quarter Pounder in most of Europe, because it's simply seen as a name, not a measurement (the amount of meat is usually mentioned in the fine print of a menu somewhere, but nobody cares).

Re:No soft metrics!

[Barsteward]

LOL... you are going backwards at the moment... might be a while before that changes

Re: No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually in Holland cans ARE 330ml thank you very much.

Re: No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

95% of the world has no problems doing woodworking without clumsy incompatible units. I think you're the one doing it wrong.

Re: No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bottle of vine is 0.75l :)

Re: No soft metrics!

[nukenerd]

"Great Britain" is really a geographical term that means the larger of the two main British Isles (another geographical term), the smaller being Ireland. It (as does Ireland) includes the numerous small islands close to it such as the Isle of Wight, Canvey, Flatholm etc. Nevertheless, the term "Great Britain and Northern Ireland" is often used as a political term meaning the same as the "United Kingdom". "Great Britain" is often used in political contexts, such as "GB" in the international car identity plate system, where it somewhat incorrectly does include Northern Ireland.

All these names are widely and indiscriminately used for all things, and probably the only people who fully understand them are experts at the College of Arms, but I don't suppose there are any on this forum right now.

Re:No soft metrics!

[thinkwaitfast]

That's decimal, not metric.

Re: No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please explain what you mean by weighing by weight rather than mass. Scales are calibrated and verified by mass. If you move a scales elevation, you calibrate to mass. Gravity is just a convenient phenomenon rather than using some inertial mechanism or some such. Is it air displacement that's so confusing? That's just a requirement when living in atmosphere and negligible for almost all tasks.

Re: No soft metrics!

[houghi]

And frankly, weight and volume are an even uglier mess in customary.

And then there is the relation between them.
1L of water is 10cmx10cm and is 1KG (Yes, I know)
Something different like salt water

The relation between these 3 measurements is easy in Metric. I also follow some YouTube woodworkers channels and often they curse on the metric system as well. Things that would be so easy in Metric become complicated and needs recalculation several time and they end up by just winging it a bit.

Re:No soft metrics!

[Cro Magnon]

Quarters, nickles. Oops!

Re: No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's l, not L, for a litre.

Re: No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no name for sub-inch measurements other than X-of-an-inch.

Cups are confusing because they're both a dry (weight) measurement and a wet (volume) measurement. In either case, they're 8 ounces. (Sometimes wet-measurement ounces are called "fluid ounces", but that's a modern thing.) And in the case of dry measurements, they're exactly half a pound. Thus pounds can be broken down into "fancy" fractional names.

You're right about the fractions, but you're wrong about integer math. None of these systems can "tame" the real world into using integer math. It isn't possible unless you base your measurement system on the Planck length.

That, by the way, is the only way you'll get me to "go metric": Discard the metric system as it is now in its entirety and base everything on the Planck constant. Define Planck's constant as 1.0 and derive all measurements from that. Don't use the speed of light to back-define your units to fit an inaccurate derived measurement of earth from the 18th century. Throw out all the babies and all the bathwater and define a real, universal constant and work up from there. Then I will be on-board with your replacement for the metric system. Until then, I'll measure in feet and inches, convert to your screwball base-10-based-on-nothing-of-importance system with yards, and put up with "cup" being a confusing measurement that can't survive outside of earth's gravity half the time.

Those are my terms. Meet them or stop whining about imperial units.

Re: No soft metrics!

[Moldiver]

No sorry but the L is correct for liter.

Re:No soft metrics!

[jep77]

Under this scheme, businesses would win BIG. McDonald's and the 9lb hammer company would be able to charge the same amount for less meat and metal. It's a win! Write your congress critters and tell them to get it done.

Of course, everybody knows that a Quarter Pounder with Cheese is called a Royale with Cheese in countries that use the metric system (because they don't know what the fuck a quarter pound is).

Also, TIL that 9 pound hammer is a strain of marijuana. Thank you Google.

Re: No soft metrics!

[mad_ian]

And most all American commodity lumber is ACTUALLY made to millimeter specification anyways.

4x8 plywood? It's not 4 feet wide, nor 8 feet long, and it's certainly not 3/4 inch thick, and reading the labels tell you that in little print.

Re:No soft metrics!

[famebait]

-and the room would have an elephant in it.

Re:No soft metrics!

[kiviQr]

Call it whatever you want: Quarters = $0.25, dime = $0.10, nickles = $0.05, penny = $0.01; 1m = $1, 1cm = $0.1 (dime), 1mm = $0.01 (cent/penny); 1km = one thousand dollars;

Re: No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

Take an walk in London... England is no more

Re: No soft metrics!

[buchanmilne]

"Of course, everybody knows that a Quarter Pounder with Cheese is called a Royale with Cheese in countries that use the metric system (because they don't know what the fuck a quarter pound is)."

You are using Pulp Fiction as your source of facts?

Royale only seems to be used in French-speaking countries ( https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wik... ), many English-speaking metric-only countries (including e.g. South Africa, see http://www.mcdonalds.co.za/men... ).

Re: No soft metrics!

[jep77]

No. I was using Pulp Fiction as a source of humor because I didn't have anything substantive to add to the conversation and I'm bored at work with very little to do. However, using my own life experience as a source, the Quarter Pounder w/Cheese is sold as Hamburger Royal Käse in Germany.

Re: No soft metrics!

[Immerman]

Yeah, but what good does "1/3rd of an inch" do you? It's a very rare ruler that has 1/3 inch measurements. You could fake it with "10/32nds and a smidge", but if you're having to resort to that, why not just stick with decimals? (Yeah, decimal-inch rulers do exist, but they're far from common, and discard all the supposed benefits)

If you find yourself needing to use a fractional unit in metric, move down to a smaller unit and everything becomes integers again. For lengths, it's a rare application where you need 1mm (~=1/25") resolution. Or just keep track of the decimal point - it's still miles easier than juggling mixed fractions. Heck, even nice simple fractions send a lot of people off the deep end.

As for "taming" the universe - it's called approximation. You measure things with sufficient precision to suit your purposes, nobody cares exactly how many molecules are in a pint of beer. What would be the point in basing something off the plank length (at this point a purely theoretical limit), when we have no way to measure anything with such insane precision? Not to mention, the plank length itself is only a rough approximation, derived as it is from universal constants that have to be experimentally measured, and are thus limited by the resolution of the instruments used to do so.

Re:No soft metrics!

[sh00z]

Please stop calling them "English" units; we haven't used them in England since before I was born.

Staying away from the stuff about definition of a country, I'll also chime in to point out that England uses English Units all of the time! Watching Top Gear and The Grand Tour, Clarkson and company always talk about automobile performance in terms of miles per hour, miles per gallon, horsepower, etc. SI just doesn't seem to have caught on in that circle.

Re:No soft metrics!

[TechnoCore]

Not sure why this is rated 5, as it is just incorrect.
1,000 kilo, 100 hecto, 0.1 deci, 0.01 centi, 0.001 milli are used all the time.
Every day measurements for construction are usually in centimeters. (as all yardsticks are marked with centimeters). Though blueprints are in millimeters or meters depending on whats on them. Grocery is weighed in hecto(grams), grams or kilos.
Different fields use different scales when it suits them. Also different countries or areas might have different traditions as well.

Re: No soft metrics!

[LinuxLuver]

Exactly. It's just better. Plus volume and mass can also be translated as one cubic centimeter of water (1 millilitre) at 3.98C (maximum density) is equal to one gram. So a litre weighs one kilogram. From an engineering point of view this is awesome. For goods in stores it's really good.

Re:No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember when Jimmy Carter was trying to move the US to metric in 1977, I saw a giant sign that said 1 inch equals 2.54 cm. Think Metric! At that moment I knew metric was dead in the US.

On an Interstate highway near here during President Peanut's tenure, we had a sign that said: "Metric Signs Next 100 Miles." I shit you not.

Re:No soft metrics!

[synp71]

A 9-pound hammer is replaced by a 5-kilo hammer. 9 pounds is for sissies. A quarter pounder weighs exactly the same and is called a "Royale" in McDonald's. When you buy it anywhere else, you'd never get such a small burger, but I have seen 110-g mini-burgers. What you are suggesting is to change all products to suit the new system. That doesn't make for easy adoption. Should all computer makers also change their products to have screens of integral number of centimeters? No, and you wouldn't want to. They measure screen sizes in inches all over the world.

Re: No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fake news

Re: No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

Only Americans could be stupid enough that when the entire world thinks that the imperial system is inferior that they would stubbornly claim it is better and then come up with totally wrong-footed and pathetic attempts to justify its use. Fucking yanks......and they wonder why the rest of the world thinks theyâ(TM)re all backwards morons....? lol

Re:No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never heard someone use cL (or dL, for that matter). I've always heard bottles of wine referred to as 750 mL and cans of soft drink as 330 mL.

Re: No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

cm fares no better dividing by 3, but its subunits aren't based on powers of 2 that make halving easy (1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32). I'm surprised you aren't arguing for metric bits and bytes, since you seem not to like systems of measurement that involve powers of 2 rather than 10.

Re: No soft metrics!

[bickerdyke]

And a rough version could be recreated from scratch, I mean: If all yardsticks or even all physical evidence of your civilization would be gone, Future archeologists could make exact replicas just from the description and a few scientific observations. Stranded on an island? if it's large enough, you could do the Erastothenes trick to measure the earth circumference, divide it by 400000000 and you HAVE ONE METER! Build a box 1x1x1 m, fill it with water, make 1000 equal portions, and you have recreated the kg.

The derivation from earth circumference would be the hardest part for meter and second, but you could write up instructions and send it as text-file to some green 6 headed aliens in the crab nebula and they could build anything where they have metric plans to in the correct size! (That's where - unlike in the dessert island example - the updated definitions would be helpfull like "take x million platin atoms and you have a kg" or "measure how far a laser beam travels while it's going through several billions electromagnetic oscillations"....)

Re:No soft metrics!

[lsatenstein]

I live in a SI country. The customary units for everything use whatever scale prefix makes the most sense.

Cans, bottles, and glasses are measured in millilitres (pronunced "mil" for short), and reservoirs are measured in megalitres. Road signs are in kilometres. Weather reports give air pressure in hectopascals. The energy content of food is measured in kilojoules.

We cope.

Weather pressure is in KiloPascals Eg. right now it is 102.6. Acres gets converted to hectors.

1 acre is around 0.4 hectors or, the other way, 1 hector is 2.47 acres.
60km/hr is around 50mph 1.6km = 1 mile.

Re:No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

> A can of coke has 33 cL, not 330 mL. Even if the can says 330 mL -- and I'm not sure if it does -- people will stick to the shorter version (thirty three is smaller than three hundred thirty), that gives the meaningful value.

Please. I hope you're a Russian being paid to cause turmoil on /.

http://sushinippon.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/refrigerantes-latas.jpg

Re: No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hectares!

Re: No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are a woodworker then you really should learn to divide 10 by 2, it's really not that hard.
3/32 is better how? Because you are used to it. Trust me, if you start working in mm, you won't ever go back to inches.

Re: No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I use both. Our country changed to metric in one day, officially (obviously people worked on it for a while first), so my parents learned imperial measures in school, but I learned metric. So I grew up with both.

If something is less than 12", I will use mm, anything over I use inches. Beyond that it depends on what the material is supplied in usually.

Re: No soft metrics!

[Desty]

In Ireland our drinks cans and bottles are labelled in mL (if less than a litre) or L. So a can of Coke is 330 mL. Nobody here uses cL. Although we do use cm more than mm, I think.

Re:No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

> It is dead in that the centimetre is a deprecated unit in the SI system, which is what you should be adopting.

The centimetre is not a unit; the unit is meter, centi is a prefix which means 1/100. Likewise, if you got a dollar, a centidollar would be a cent (guess what did this name come from).

It follows that the "centimetre" cannot be deprecated. So that you know.

> The SI base length is a metre, and units derived from the base should be multiples of, or divisions by, 1000.

That is incorrect. You can have any (sub)multiple as a derivate auxiliary unit, if that is somewhat useful. For instance, someone one day said an inch is 2.54cm, so in that country, an inch is a derivate from the meter.

Typically we associate 10-based greek prefixes with powers of then. Their names are used in a variety of contexts. In IT, we're more familiar now with mega-, giga- and tera-, but kilo- was once useful as RAM was way smaller (let's forget now about 1024 being named as kilo -- it would be a digression).

As greek prefixes, being part of the language, they cannot be deprecated, too.

The prefixes under 1000 are: hecto- (100x), deca- (10x), deci- (/10) and centi-(/100).

Useful list of prefixes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deca-

> I work in an engineering design office and we never use centimeters

Space inside a car, for instance, can be specified in centimeters, which makes for clearer diagrams.

> we never use centimeters, which is a unit for dressmakers if for anything.

Units in SI have no special uses, but precision may dictate the use of smaller units like mm. Centimeters are usually enough in descriptions -- see for example:

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-w1oFOozUVHc/UuUvzRc_wTI/AAAAAAABQFQ/emJsHMBca0s/s1600/A3-x-CLA-x-320-dimensoes.JPG

Re: No soft metrics!

[ncc74656]

What's 1/6 of an inch? 1/3? Ditto cups or pounds.

You use thirds quite a bit in the kitchen. Third-cup liquid and dry measures are common, and a tablespoon is equal to three teaspoons.

Re: No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

In Australia, where we have been metric for almost 50 years, a regular can of Coke is 375mL, a bottle of wine is 750mL, an engineering/architectural drawing is exclusively in mm but, universally, regular, non-technical people talk in cm for small things and metres for long things. So a conversation between a builder and client will see the builder using mm for everything and the client will be talking in centimetres (because that's the easiest unit to relate to and everyone knows how long a 30cm ruler is). The beauty is that anyone who knows their 10x tables and can convert on the fly without flinching.

Motorbike engine displacement is exclusively in cc, cars are measured in L unless they're under 1L and then cc is used, but those cars are rare here. And volume is usually expressed with a capital letter L or mL on products, though few would bother doing this when actually writing ml.

Grams are always used for anything under 1kg. Drugs and other very small things are always measured in milligrams.

Distance is exclusively in km for signage, when written and in conversation, even though colloquially every Australian will all say, "it was actually fvcking MILES away!"

Exceptions: Anyone born before the 90s here will know and use feet and inches exclusively when describing the height of humans. Interestingly, almost everyone would use inches for the length of a man's appendage. Now and then you'll find some bozo being "fancy" by putting 70cl on their boutique bottles of gin etc. Calories is still a popular unit here though all official nutritional info is given in kilojoules (unless it's imported from the USA, but even then Australian standards prescribe that a local conversation sticker be added to the label).

Re: No soft metrics!

[Anonymous Coward]

I should add that Australia officially transitioned to metric over an 18 year period, so there's hope for you America! My feeling is that it'll happen organically over the next generation or two what with the interwebs and more Americans becoming aware of the world beyond the fence :P 3

Re: No soft metrics!

[Immerman]

Granted. But if you're just going to say "1/3 of a [unit]", it really doesn't matter what [unit] is. Meanwhile "33 centi[unit]s" is just about as convenient while making combinations easier. If I want, say, measure 1/3 cup oil on top of 3/4 cup oil, I have to first convert to 4/12 + 9/12 = 13/12 = 1+1/12. A lot of arithmetic that a *lot* of people can't easily do in their head. Meanwhile if I had 750mC + 330 mC, adding to 1080mC is nice and straightforward. And the theoretical benefits for scaling down don't really translate to a full recipe, which is as likely as not to include 1/3C of this, and 1/4 cup of that, so reducing it to 1/3rd or 1/4th means you're dealing with 9ths, 12ths, and 16ths, which are probably not marked on your cup (yeah, 1/16C = 1 T, but the others are still a problem) And it means larger volumes can get you weird composite measurements like 2C+3T.

I fully agree 12 increments can be useful for subdividing, especially when dealing with small quantities of a few [units]. But for it to really be useful you need to actually use a number system with the same base, as did the ancient Babylonians from who we got the 360 degrees in a circle - who used a base 60 number system (the smallest number divisible by every number from 1-6) so that there were 10(base 60) seconds in a minute, 10 minutes in a degree, and 10 degrees in the corner of an equilateral triangle (6 of which fit around a circle)

Re: No soft metrics!

[Immerman]

The pound is the standard unit of weight in customary units. The standard unit of mass is the slug. When is the last time you saw a scale that measures in slugs? Or even anything that goes into slugs neatly, since a slug is a rather large unit for most applications (1slug = 32.174 pounds)

Re:How Caribbean Pirates Hijacked America's Metric

[phantomfive]

It's really cool. I didn't know the US ever considered using the metric system in the 1700s, nor did I realize they were looking to standardize on any particular system at that time. The pirates is just a nice touch added to the story.

Pirate Storms

[Anonymous Coward]

, Dombey ran into a giant storm. "It blew his ship quite far south into the Caribbean Sea," says Martin. And you know who was lurking in Caribbean waters in the late 1700s? Pirates.

My God, the pirates did know how to manipulate and weaponize tropical storms!

Well, I'm impressed

[Trailer Trash]

Frankly, on the modern Slashdot I expected to see something about the Russians interfering with our adoption of the metric system at the behest of Donald Trump.

Re:Well, I'm impressed

[CanadianMacFan]

I thought that the US was afraid to have metric in general use* because the population feared it was one step closer to having universal health care thrust upon them.

* - The metric system is in use by the scientific community so it's unfair to say that it's not used there at all. Some people aren't afraid to step into the 1700's.

Re:Well, I'm impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

In the engineering community, we use both sets of units often converting from one to the other so we can get something built.

10 hour days..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll consider metrics when the clock, day, and calendar are also 'neatly' divided by 10.

Re:10 hour days..

[jfdavis668]

Remember this moment, people, eighty past two on April 47th, it's the dawn of an enlightened Springfield!

Re:10 hour days..

[Applehu Akbar]

I'll consider metrics when the clock, day, and calendar are also 'neatly' divided by 10.

The first iteration of metric, right after the French revolution, included a ten-hour day of hundred-minute hours, with hundred-second minutes. The months were renamed from the antique Romanesque hodgepodge to be more logique: March became Germinal, the month when things grew, October became Brumaire, the foggy month, and November became Nivôse, the snowy month.

But people wanted quarter-hours and all the other integer divisible units they were used to, and the month-renamers were reminded that, malheureusement, the new month names only made sense in Paris. In places like Martinique and Réunion, the new names made no sense.

Re:10 hour days..

[AmiMoJo]

What was the issue with quarter hours? 25 minutes is an integer.

When the Japanese adopted the western calendar they just numbered the months one to twelve.

Re:10 hour days..

[Applehu Akbar]

What was the issue with quarter hours? 25 minutes is an integer.

When the Japanese adopted the western calendar they just numbered the months one to twelve.

My kingdom for the ability to postedit, as we have in every other form out there.

And yes, I like the Japanese month names.

Re:10 hour days..

[Anonymous Coward]

You need an example? Watch the old b/w movie 'Metropolis'. Whenever you see a clock on the wall, it will have only 10 markings for the hours, but still uses 60 mins per hour.

I bet most people didn't notice this.

Re:10 hour days..

[Anonymous Coward]

We numbered our months as well. September, Sept- (meaning seven) is the ninth month. October, Oct- (meaning eight) is the tenth month. It was obviously done by someone that started numbering at -1, probably a physicist.

Re:10 hour days..

[Anonymous Coward]

It is easier to divide a circle into basic fractional parts. Sure it gets more difficult when you get to larger numbers like 60, but your major divisions will be spot on which helps make the subdivisions more accurate and easily assessed using comparative methods. Quite important for managing sextants and clocks. It's easier to use acquired British navigation tables than doing all the conversions then publishing especially when the tables have a limited shelf life. Acquired British sextants would also be immediately useful. There's a reason why Greenwich is 0 longitude.

Re:10 hour days..

[drew_kime]

It is easier to divide a circle into basic fractional parts.

A lot of the issues with dividing a foot by 2, 3, 4 & 6 can be hand-waved away as not being that big a deal. But triangles are pretty central to a lot of physical properties. The ability to evenly divide a circle by multiples of 3 is incredibly useful. I'm guessing that's why I've never heard anyone arguing to metric-ify radian measurements.

Re:10 hour days..

[AKCoder]

Where can I find more information on this? I find it very fascinating!

Re:10 hour days..

[catprog]

From my understanding, it was the Romans moving January and February to the start of the year.

No. It wont be.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

If the United States were more like the rest of the world, a McDonald's Quarter Pounder might be known as the McDonald's 113-Grammer, John Henry's 9-pound hammer would be 4.08 kilograms, and any 800-pound gorillas in the room would likely weigh 362 kilos.

It would be a 100 gram patty, 5 kilo hammer, or half a ton gorilla. There is no need for precise conversion, and a good easy number is what marketing people and idiom pioneers would choose/use.

Re:No. It wont be.

[Quirkz]

But does iambic pentameter become half an iambic decameter, or 5 iambic meters? And instead of pounding sand, should one half kilogram sand, or just gram it a bunch of times? How many liters go into a Spanish galleon? Getting thrashed within a centimeter of your life sounds way too close for comfort, but is being thrashed within a meter close enough to get the point across? And don't get me started on the kiloseconds.

Re:No. It wont be.

[TeknoHog]

A related example: when you order a beer in Finland, you don't ask for 0.5 litres which is the usual measure, you ask for a beer. You could also ask for a small beer (0.33 L). You might think our decimals are cumbersome and nerdy, but we wouldn't use them in such situations. The precise volumes vary across places, but these are the general standards; some UK-themed bars do use actual pint and half pint.

Re:No. It wont be.

[Parker Lewis]

It's exactly this way here in Brazil (which uses the metric system): McDonald's say that Quarter is a 100gr. patty.

Re:No. It wont be.

[CrimsonAvenger]

***sighs***

And instead of pounding sand, should one half kilogram sand, or just gram it a bunch of times?

"Pounding sand" does NOT refer to weight, but to hitting sand with a mallet to compact it....

Re:No. It wont be.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, go pound cake.

Re:No. It wont be.

[Anonymous Coward]

100g 1/4lb. 13.5g difference. More ways for corporations to screw you. They're making almost 14% more profit where metric is used.

Re:No. It wont be.

[Calydor]

When's the last time you checked the actual weight of the patty in your US Quarter Pounder?

Re:No. It wont be.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. That was the one part that wasn't actually talking about an Imperial unit.
 
Oh crap, I had meant to try writing that in the iambic decameter GP was talking about!

Re:No. It wont be.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actual weight of identifiable meat? They'd refer you to their legal department.

Re:No. It wont be.

[jrumney]

According to McDonalds themselves, it is 4.25 ounces before cooking. Which is pretty close to 120g (so close, I would not be surprised if that is the actual target weight their production lines are calibrated for).

Re:No. It wont be.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Pounding sand" does NOT refer to weight, but to hitting sand with a mallet to compact it....

Ah, okay. Your mom and I thought it meant something else entirely.

JK ;-P

Re:No. It wont be.

[serviscope_minor]

"Pounding sand" does NOT refer to weight, but to hitting sand with a mallet to compact it....

I think the joke passed approximately 5 miles (8.054 km) over your head.

You know that also a galleon is a not a volumetric measure and pentameter is not a unit of distance, right?

Re:No. It wont be.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wooooosh!

Alternative system

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/page/reg-standards-converter.html

Re:Alternative system

[thinkwaitfast]

You do realize that typing any of those directly to google is faster and easier. Too bad most people don't have smartphones.

Oblig. Simpsons quote

[Kargan]

"The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!"

Magic numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

A quarter pounder doesn't start with 0.250 pounds. It starts with 1/4 pounds. That's not even one significant digit worth of precision. A metric burger, if named similarly, would be a hectogrammer (or maybe a dix y decagram'r), a 9 pound hammer is 4 kg (unless it's specified in weight. Then it's forty newtons), and 800 pound gorillas mass 400 kilos, or depending on how much precision is really being expressed, even a half-tonne.

Also.. shouldn't the length dimensions of a metric mass standard be specified in metric units?

Britain is mostly metric

[dow]

Britain is metric. We still order a pint of beer and our road signs and speed limits uses miles... but we are metric. My pants are still measured in inches, and most people would order construction materials by the inch and foot, even if the plans were drawn up in millimeters. I could tell you my tyre pressure in psi, but wouldn't be sure about the Kpa. Apart from that though, we are definitely metric.

Re:Britain is mostly metric

[serviscope_minor]

and most people would order construction materials by the inch and foot,

The timber yards seem to sell by metric measurements round here. Large boards are 2400x1200mm. Look up Jewson, Gibbs&Dandy and etc.

Re:Britain is mostly metric

[Anonymous Coward]

You weigh yourselves in stone. Your car engines outputs so much horse power and so much foot pounds of torque.

Re:Britain is mostly metric

[Anonymous Coward]

Britain is metric... My pants are still measured in inches

Say what? When I found myself in the UK without realizing that my yankee midline had gained a few pou^H^H^Hkilos, the first step in my shopping foray to Marks & Spencer was a bit of metric waist size conversion.

Incidentally, what's up with that pocket coin catcher thing? So funny that China exports varieties for each of our traditions.

Re:Britain is mostly metric

[drinkypoo]

The timber yards seem to sell by metric measurements round here. Large boards are 2400x1200mm. Look up Jewson, Gibbs&Dandy and etc.

That seems a relatively new development. When I was a child chatting on the relatively new internet, ISTR that people in the UK were still talking about lumber in feet.

Re:Britain is mostly metric

[serviscope_minor]

That seems a relatively new development. When I was a child chatting on the relatively new internet, ISTR that people in the UK were still talking about lumber in feet.

Hate to break it to you, but that was 20 years ago (I assume given the description of relatively new) :(

A lot has changed in the last 20 years, much of it for the better, some not.

Re:Britain is mostly metric

[drinkypoo]

Hate to break it to you, but that was 20 years ago (I assume given the description of relatively new) :(

Well, that does not come as a surprise. But that's still a pretty recent change in the history of plywood...

Re:Britain is mostly metric

[Anonymous Coward]

Construction is all metric. Screw threads went years ago, and now all materials are by the metre.

Alas, for the UK, we still cling onto our our daft, pointless measures of yesteryear in some areas, because we are British and proud to be different, even when it's pointless.

Re:Britain is mostly metric

[havana9]

Ahh... weird units. Even in metrics countries there are some interesting units used.
Have you ever heard about CGS or Gauss system and derivatives?
In Italy pressure is mesaured in

• atm bar
• pascal (Pa) or 1kilopascal (kPa)
• millibars mb)
• torr
• 760 mm-Hg
• technical atmosphere
• cm–H2O

Re:Britain is mostly metric

[hawk]

> Large boards are 2400x1200mm

so 7.9 by 3.9 ft, pretty much the size of a nominal 4x8 board.

hawk

Re:Britain is mostly metric

[serviscope_minor]

so 7.9 by 3.9 ft, pretty much the size of a nominal 4x8 board

Pretty much? Not sure I get what point you're trying to make.

Re:Britain is mostly metric

[hawk]

the key is "nominal"--a 2x4, for example, is the size of the wood *before* cutting; no american wood sizing is the full stated length.

I would not be surprised at all to find that that 1200x2400 was *exactly* the same size as the board it "replaced", or at least that the shipped sizes within the accepted tolerances of the old size.

(In fact, I'd be mildly surprised if it wasn't within the old tolerance range).
hawk

Yes, pirates but not the Caribbean.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Yes the pirates of the corporate offices were the main reason for not changing.

The rolling mills produce the basic raw materials used in our manufacturing. There are two kinds, the long products (wires and rods) and the wide products (sheets and plates). All of them come in standard sizes, "gauges" or fractions of inch. 12 gauge is 1/12th of an inch, for example. All the nuts, bolts etc derived from the long products, were in SAE. It is a significant monumental change to change all the tooling of all the factories of America.

Could we have done it? Sure we could have. But it would have cost us some serious money, and the corporate offices were not willing to pay for it, even if the engineers and scientists on the floor were ready for or even begging for it.

Re:Yes, pirates but not the Caribbean.

[PPH]

Could we have done it? Sure we could have. But it would have cost us some serious money, and the corporate offices were not willing to pay for it, even if the engineers and scientists on the floor were ready for or even begging for it.

Engineers and scientists fixed that. We draw our plans up in metric. Then we ship them overseas for manufacturing. Financing comes from the offshore money parked in Ireland or the Channel Islands. American corporate offices are increasingly meaningless. They can just sell each other paper.

Re:Yes, pirates but not the Caribbean.

[dryeo]

Don't be daft. Switching to metric does not mean having to retool most things. We did it i n Canada about 50 years back. Lumber mills still make 2x4's and 4x8 sheets of plywood, SAE tools are still sold. My Dad, a machinist, still used thous. Most factories have now changed over as equipment was replaced.
The only things forced to change were things like commercial scales, gas pumps and new stuff like cars having speedometers in metric. Things like meat are advertised by the pound but sold by the kilo so people don't even have to think

Re:Yes, pirates but not the Caribbean.

[Anonymous Coward]

All of them come in standard sizes, "gauges" or fractions of inch. 12 gauge is 1/12th of an inch, for example. All the nuts, bolts etc derived from the long products, were in SAE.

The "12" in "12 gauge" referred to how many drawing operations were used to get to that size. 12 gauge is NOT 1/12th of an inch, and it's different depending on whether you're talking about wire or sheet metal (and for sheet metal it depends on what kind of metal you have).
Also "SAE" is the Society of Automotive Engineers, who standardized things. But they weren't founded until 1905 so I'm not sure it's relevant to the original story.

Kilopirates

[Tablizer]

Arrrr, walk duh 5 meter plank!

So Farfetched...

[Anonymous Coward]

Americans are just too stuck in their way to even want to understand the Metric System. They tried switching to it before but failed catastrophically.
Because somehow,
10mm = 1 cm, 10cm = 1dm, 10dm = 1m, 10m = 1 dam, 10 dam = 1 hm, 10 hm = 1km
Or more commonly used 100cm = 1m, 1000m = 1km, rarely will dm, dam and hm ever be used outside of a specific job or math class. Literally multiple or divide by 10 to reach the next unit. (when they are squared, it's by 100 and cubed it's 1000).
1000mg = 1g, 1000gram = 1kg, 1000kg = 1 tonne
is too hard to understand.

Yet ridiculousness like 12 inch in a foot, 3 feet in a verge, 1760 verge in a mile make sense to them.
Then you add to that the fractions of an inch instead of having a precise number... where 1mm is 3/64 of an inch... but 2mm, which should literally be double, is 5/64 of an inch. Because somehow it's so imprecise you can't even get an accurate representation of small measurement, unless you want to go with tons of decimals. 0.03937007874015748 inch for 1mm 0.07874015748031496 inch for 2mm.
See which one is better as a unit of measurement? I'll help you, IT'S THE ONE WITH A SINGLE DIGIT.

Re: So Farfetched...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's one of those huge inertia things that will be argued forever but never switched just like QUERTY, just like driving on the left/right side of the road. To many people are used to the current way and changing is literally as awkward as trying to write with your left hand instead of your right. They then educate their kids in the same way. Cycle repeats.

Re:So Farfetched...

[bws111]

Nobody says the metric system is difficult. What they say is that is different, and that there is no compelling reason to change. There is no denying that changing would have an enormous price tag, but nobody ever can list a single benefit that the average American would see from the change.

The only people that claim something is too hard are people such as yourself who can't seem to wrap their heads around anything that isn't a multiple of 10, and apparently also suck at fractions.

And nobody ever says 1mm is 3/64 of an inch. 1mm is 1mm, and 3/64 is 3/64 and they are not used interchangeably.

Re:So Farfetched...

[Kjella]

Nobody says the metric system is difficult. What they say is that is different, and that there is no compelling reason to change. There is no denying that changing would have an enormous price tag, but nobody ever can list a single benefit that the average American would see from the change.

Meh, it would only have an enormous price tag if you forced everything to change overnight. If you wanted to promote it you'd simply start with requiring dual information... like take a driver's license you could say that "HT: 5-09" should now be HT: 5-09 / 175 cm. And after a few years of that you say HT: 175 cm / 5-09. And after a few years of that you say HT: 175 (5-09). Gas pumps must show values in galleons and liters. Dual distance road signs. Product weight in oz/lbs and grams.

And then at some point when the country is conditioned enough you say that next time we expect goods to go metric. Next time it shouldn't be an 8 oz (226.8g) bag of chips, it should be a 200g (7.05 oz) or 250g (8.82 oz) bag of chips. The UK did this in lots of areas, your old gas regulator measured cubic feet the new one cubic meters. The main thing is that people have a perception of how big/long/heavy something is in advance. As for cost... The world has 7.6 billion people, 7.2 billion use the metric system. Most everything produced abroad will have weird imperial units...

Re:So Farfetched...

[phantomfive]

In the US, we use metric on almost all bottles that are sold. It's a good thing too: I can deal with 200ml but can never remember how many ounces in a quart.

Also worth mentioning that most countries use some kind of perverse mix of metric and traditional: they measure their height in meters but weigh themselves in pounds, or measure distances in traditional li or whatever.

Re:So Farfetched...

[bws111]

All of that, and you still didn't answer the basic question: why do it? OK, the UK made the change. Exactly what impoved in anyone's life as a result of that change?

Re:So Farfetched...

[Anonymous Coward]

Makes life easier when you don't have to remember how long a mile is compared to a kilometer, you just need to know how long a kilometer is. Do you know how frustrating it is when an American tells me "It was 20 degrees today" and I'm like "Ah, that sounds nice" forgetting that they're not like the rest of the world who use celcius. "I lost 10 pounds this month", come again, how much weight did you lose? Let me waste 30 seconds and Google that to find out how much it is in normal units. Ah, 4.5 kg. No, let's all use the same system. The rest of the world has already decided to use metric, why can't you?

Re:So Farfetched...

[bws111]

Most Americans never need to know or care how long a mile is compared to a kilometer, and the people that do need to know or care don't have a problem with it. So no benefit there. Still waiting for ANY real benefit to Americans to justify the change. Haven't heard one yet.

Re:So Farfetched...

[Anonymous Coward]

The 70's called. They want their idea back.

Re:So Farfetched...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Most Americans never need to know or care how long a mile is compared to a kilometer, and the people that do need to know or care don't have a problem with it. So no benefit there. Still waiting for ANY real benefit to Americans to justify the change. Haven't heard one yet.

There are significant gains to be made from the ability to build on the work of others. You don't have to start from scratch, there's no need to reinvent the wheel.

This is obvious and Americans should be able to understand. And yet we face phrases like that above of yours. And we see Trump exiting the Paris deal about climate.

It seems Americans are not equipped to understand such simple facts. :-(

Talk like a Pirate day!

[jfdavis668]

That is why we still celebrate talk like a pirate day! To commemorate the day we defeated the metric system!

Stuoid is as ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The only cuntry in the world stiil using dumb Brit system. Get into step with the real world and use a proper system.

Executive Order 12770—Metric Usage in Federa

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a federal law requiring that in dealing with the federal government that units shall be in metric (SI).

There is a federal law requiring that all food, liquid and drug shall be labeled in metric (go ahead, look in your kitchen, pantry, garage and find a container not in metric). There is no law requiring imperial units be used for anything.

People are free to use whatever they want, And really the only time it comes into play inmost people's lives is in driving and getting gas. In both cases metric is available to use if you want. And now that driverless electric cars have taken over, it's all moot. Industrial fields use metric where it's relevant. Power is measured in amps, volts and watts, all metric people use all the time. I don't understand the big deal other than trying to start controversy. Use whatever works for you.

If you really want to see the US move to the metric system, make using anything else illegal punishable by jail time and a big fine.

Pirates, in the Atlantic, in late 18th century?

[multriha]

Was this like 50+ years after the very short period of actual piracy in the Caribbean and most of the Atlantic fizzle out?

Have they be doing their pirate research with Disney movies?

Re:Pirates, in the Atlantic, in late 18th century?

[Anonymous Coward]

Although the heyday of pirates was really in the 16th and 17th centuries, they remained a factor in the Caribbean into the 19th century. This particular ship was in fact captured by pirates (the difference between a pirate and a privateer mostly being whether you were from the same country or not). Privateers were a major factor in the War of 1812, for example.

Re:Pirates, in the Atlantic, in late 18th century?

[iggymanz]

You're not doing your research with current news, there is piracy in the Caribbean now, it's a 400+ year old problem

Re:what if they adopted British system for currenc

[kzwork]

Even further - how we will measure: millimetres, micrometers, nano meters, kilo volts, mega or giga watts, pico or nano farads etc?!

The metric system is the tool of the devil!

[Joe_Dragon]

My car gets forty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it.

Re:The metric system is the tool of the devil!

[AmiMoJo]

Most electric vehicle manufacturers specify the battery capacity in kWh. For some reason BMW uses Ah, which is dumb because it's only half the information you need to compare it. Maybe that's the point.

If course none of them tell you the usable capacity. A 30kWh battery has maybe 28kWh usable in a typical EV.

Re:The metric system is the tool of the devil!

[Pfhorrest]

I was disappointed to discover, prompted by this article, that a major reason metric was rejected in the early US was religion. Not exactly that it was a tool of the devil per se, but that it was a tool of atheists, and unacceptable to God.

To quote Wikipedia's United States customary units: History:

The customary system was championed by the U.S.-based International Institute for Preserving and Perfecting Weights and Measures in the late 19th century. Advocates of the customary system saw the French Revolutionary, or metric, system as atheistic.[6] An auxiliary of the Institute in Ohio published a poem with wording such as "down with every 'metric' scheme" and "A perfect inch, a perfect pint".[6] One adherent of the customary system called it "a just weight and a just measure, which alone are acceptable to the Lord."[6]

Ninjas

[Anonymous Coward]

This settles it, Ninjas are better than Pirates!

metric vs English

[Anonymous Coward]

In the metric system 1 millilitre of water occupies one cubic centimetre, weighs one gram and requires one calorie to raise its temperature by one degree kelvin, which is one percent of the difference between its boiling point and its freezing point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it.

Whereas in the American system, the answer to 'how much energy does it take to boil a room temperature gallon of water is 'Go fuck yourself' because you cannot directly relate any of the quantities

Nixon introduced Metrics in the 70's

[ze_foster]

I was in the first grade in California when they started teaching us the metric system. That went on for a couple of years, but we returned to "English Measure" after Nixon left office. I didn't see Metrics again until I took trig.

Here's a paragraph from Nixon's letter to Congress:

5) An important step which could be of great significance in fostering technological innovations and enhancing our position in world trade is that of changing to the metric system of measurement. The Secretary of Commerce has submitted to the Congress legislation which would allow us to begin to develop a carefully coordinated national plan to bring about this change. The proposed legislation would bring together a broadly representative board of private citizens who would work with all sectors of our society in planning for such a transition. Should such a change be decided on, it would be implemented on a cooperative, voluntary basis.

Source: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu...

US already use the metric system

[Anonymous Coward]

Its funny because the U.S define all their units in S.I with a conversion factor.

Erm...

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA> If the United States were more like the rest of the world, a McDonald's Quarter Pounder might be known as the McDonald's 113-Grammer, John Henry's 9-pound hammer would be 4.08 kilograms, and any 800-pound gorillas in the room would likely weigh 362 kilos.

Let me fix for you:

If the United States were more like the rest of the world, a McDonald's Quarter Pounder might be known as the McDonald's 100-Grammer(or more likely, Eighther), John Henry's 9-pound hammer would be 4 kg, and any 800-pound gorillas in the room would likely weigh 300 kilos (or 400).

a) you don't advertise things to have 4.08 Kilograms. You name it 4 Kilo, because it's easier to market it (laws might force you to put a disclaimer in small letters: actual weight is 4.08 kg);
b) BTW, for similar reasons a 9-pound hammer seems to missing 1 pound;
c) an Eighther would have 125g, one eighth of a kg -- and no, people would not complain, they'd buy the double burger version;
d) we actually say 400-kilo gorilla, 300 is not impressive enough I guess, or maybe even numbers look less odd :-)

We do have though beverages sold in weird volumes, which probably can be traced to some idiot translating sizes directly from English, or machines regulated to put the same amount you got in your own country.

Soda cups have more normal sizes 300ml, 500ml and 700ml. How do 10.14, 16.91, 23.67 fl. oz. sound to you? Not cool, heh? So don't do that.

And for your enlightenment:

https://www.zmescience.com/other/map-of-countries-officially-not-using-the-metric-system/

Re:Erm...

[Spacelem]

we actually say 400-kilo gorilla, 300 is not impressive enough I guess, or maybe even numbers look less odd :-)

Or a 60 stone gorilla. Now that sounds scary!

(Okay 57 stone). Honestly I have no idea what 800 lb is supposed to mean without making that translation, and if you talk about a 200 lb human, is that heavy? It's just not a meaningful number system to me.

This hypothesis ...

[PPH]

... gained additional support when pirates re-wrote their ditties to refer to "pieces of ten".

US is metric nation

[jamej]

The United States Of America, is a metric nation. We are one of the original 9 signors of the metric treaty of 1875. We have paid our dues every year since to further the metric system. Every one of our units of weights, measures, etc., is defined on the metric system, e.g., 6.2 miles = 10 kilometers. The whole system is elegant and cool for science. However, for every day use our traditional system is more common sense, e.g., one inch is about the length of the last thumb joint to the tip of the thumb, a foot about the length of an adult foot, a yard a one step, etc.. Later, Jim

Re:US is metric nation

[ceoyoyo]

There seems to be a strange (or not so strange) dichotomy. Scientists, engineers, anybody who's senior enough to have to deal with regulations, work with metric. The others work with pretend non-metric.

The measurement system itself seems to help enforce the class system.

US metric system already here

[k6mfw]

Well not really but thankfully physics and chemistry courses were in metric, subject matter still difficult and US units would make it worse (at least for me).

Interesting article, unfortunately most slashdotters here left corny remarks. In 1970s it seemed very serious, the mention about The Metric Conversion Act of 1975, reminded me of that time. Other day I came across a 1970s paperback in my junque collection about "get ready for the metric system!" I also remember seeing an article about a group, "Stop Metric Madness" which they argued a centimeter is too short and a meter is too long.

I wonder if some industries use it, or simply list both. Back in the days of Usenet there was a discussion what units are used on the Intl Space Station, someone answered a whole collection of everything. Though other countries use metric there were many places that used US units (the country footing most of the money). A mention the Russians sometimes use "kilogram-force" just to mess with us.

Re:US metric system already here

[Baron_Yam]

> In 1970s it seemed very serious, the mention about The Metric Conversion Act of 1975, reminded me of that time. Other day I came across a 1970s paperback in my junque collection about "get ready for the metric system!" I also remember seeing an article about a group, "Stop Metric Madness" which they argued a centimeter is too short and a meter is too long.

I grew up in the 70s, and schools in my area were teaching both systems but starting to favour metric (pay attention to that extra 'u' I just threw in, it might be an important hint!).

It was difficult for a lot of adults to flip from pounds to kilograms, especially when buying produce, so for a long time (well, even now) you'd see both on labels.

Gassing up in liters and measuring mileage in L/100km actually turns out to be much easier when calculating how far you can expect your car to go on a tank... and we mostly fuel our cars in dollars anyway.

Human height and weight are still mixed, I'm more likely to tell you how tall I am in feet and inches and how much I weigh in pounds, but 40 years later I'm actually starting to think in centimeters and kilograms instead. I expect my kids won't understand the imperial system at all.

Re:Executive Order 12770—Metric Usage in Fed

[Immerman]

>If you really want to see the US move to the metric system, make using anything else illegal punishable by jail time and a big fine.

Or, for a less drastic start - the government could just stop using customary units. If all the highway signs were only labeled in terms of km, people would get used to using them. Municipal water and gas services could charge by the liter as well, though I'm not sure how many people actually pay attention to the details there. Or the biggest one - stop using customary units in public schools. Make every math, science, home economics, etc. book use exclusively metric units and within 20 years customary units would fade to niche uses.

Blame Ronald Reagan...

[alleycat0]

...who abolished the United States Metric Board (charged with converting the U.S. to the metric system) during his first year in office.

Re:what if they adopted British system for currenc

[Anonymous Coward]

Even further - how we will measure: millimetres, micrometers, nano meters, kilo volts, mega or giga watts, pico or nano farads etc?!

1 Farad = 1 Mini Cooper

Customary measures better for everyday use

[Eravnrekaree]

Fahrenheit makes much more sense than Celsius for weather, because Fahrenheit is scaled better for weather temperature. 100 is pretty hot day and near the upper end of temperatures in many locations, and 0 is near the lower end of a weather temperature. In the Midwest US, its near perfect, most locations go up to around 100 F in summer and go down to near 0 F in winter. So you end up with less wasted scale. On Celsius, 35-100 is wasted since few places get that hot. This means when you say the 20s in Celsius, it means a wide range of temperature. If you say 80s in F its a much narrower range.

Maybe different scales for different purposes, Fahrenheit for weather, celsius for science.

With the foot, the foot always seems to be just right for measuring walls, ceilings, buildings. inches for smaller things like TVs. Centimeters are too small and meters are too big for many everyday object. So thats why with metric, you end up with either very large centimeter values or odd floating point meter values. Again, English measurements work better for everyday use.

I prefer to just stay with customary. in the USA, anyway, most containers in stores have both systems on packaging so you can use the system you prefer.

There is something artificial and Orwellian about metric, Its a synthetic system, a poor fit for everyday use, while customary measures feel more organic for everyday use. George Orwell mentioned this in relation to metric beer in 1984.

Re:Customary measures better for everyday use

[Baron_Yam]

>Fahrenheit makes much more sense than Celsius for weather, because Fahrenheit is scaled better for weather temperature.

This is exactly wrong. Celsius is perfect as it's based on water at standard pressure. If it's below zero, normal water will freeze. If it's 100, water boils. It's very intuitive.

>This means when you say the 20s in Celsius, it means a wide range of temperature.

Oh noes! A degree centigrade is about twice a degree Fahrenheit. This is not the end of the world. The swing on your thermostat is less sensitive than that.

>On Celsius, 35-100 is wasted since few places get that hot

If it's over 35c, you're probably dying as your body fails to dump enough waste heat to keep your core temperature low enough. Maybe it's a dry heat, though.

>There is something artificial and Orwellian about metric, Its a synthetic system, a poor fit for everyday use

You are mistaking your personal comfort with 'fit'. The place metric generally fails is in having a convenient measure of human height. The best it can do is the decimeter, which puts the 'standard human' at around 18 decimeters. Still, the inch is too broad a range, and it's not too difficult to measure yourself in centimeters. You get used to it.

Where the imperial system simply cannot compete is in powers of ten... because it doesn't believe in them, adding conversion factors between scales that metric simply doesn't need to worry about.

Re:Customary measures better for everyday use

[ceoyoyo]

Funny, height is one of the arguments I'd use FOR metric (I live in Canada where we tend to use feet and inches for height, but I have lots of European friends who look at me like I'm stupid when I use them).

One-eighty is a perfectly good height in centimetres. What's weird is using two different units: 5'11". That's, um, 12*5+11 = 71 inches. Or 5.9 feet.

Re:Customary measures better for everyday use

[serviscope_minor]

Fahrenheit makes much more sense than Celsius for weather, because Fahrenheit is scaled better for weather temperature.

No this is just utter rot. It's what you are used to because you grew up with it. To me it's nonsensical and C makes much more sense because I grew up with it.

- a lot == very cold
- a bit == a bit cold
0 cold
10 not cold
20 warm
30 hot

0 is a very convenient turning point for "getting pretty cold".

In the Midwest US, its near perfect, most locations go up to around 100 F in summer and go down to near 0 F in winter.

I don't live in the midwest.

So you end up with less wasted scale. On Celsius, 35-100 is wasted since few places get that hot.

bwuuhhh? wasted? You know there's more to temperature than weather, right? I mean there's cooking for a start. Gelatine melts at 35 degrees, eggs set at 80 degrees as does corn starch, water boils at 100, syrup starts at 110 and so on and so forth.

This means when you say the 20s in Celsius, it means a wide range of temperature. If you say 80s in F its a much narrower range.

So people say "low 20s" or "high 20s".

With the foot, the foot always seems to be just right for measuring walls, ceilings, buildings

Because you're used to it. Meters and cm are fine. Builders use mm for a lot of stuff.

Centimeters are too small and meters are too big for many everyday object

That's utter tosh and you've exactly reversed your arguments for F and C. A centimeter is about half an inch. Works fine.

So thats why with metric, you end up with either very large centimeter values

Most people here have a school level education, so 50 is not considered an unacceptably large number.

Again, English measurements work better for everyday use.

Only because you're used to them. Metric also works perfectly fine for every day use if you're used to them.

Re:Customary measures better for everyday use

[thenitz]

There is something artificial and Orwellian about metric, Its a synthetic system, a poor fit for everyday use, while customary measures feel more organic for everyday use. George Orwell mentioned this in relation to metric beer in 1984.

No, it's just about the system you learned when you were young. It's not more "organic" or anything, it's just custom and tradition.

It's as easy an natural for me, living in continental Europe, to say I got a 120 cm TV as it is for you to say you have a 48' one. Celsius is pretty good for the weather too - I know that if it's sub-zero, then roads are slippery and pipes are freezing.

It's simply much more difficult for you to make unit conversions than it is for me.

Re:Customary measures better for everyday use

[nukenerd]

Fahrenheit makes much more sense than Celsius for weather, because Fahrenheit is scaled better for weather temperature. 100 is pretty hot day and near the upper end of temperatures in many locations, and 0 is near the lower end of a weather temperature

Eh?? I was taught Fahrenheit first but still never got my head round it for weather (or anything else); AFAIR its zero and 100 are based on the freezing or boiling points of substances that are only found in science laboratories. I honestly could not tell you off the top of my head what a warm day would be in Fahrenheit. OTOH Celsius is easy for weather : zero is when water freezes, 20 is a warm day and 30 is a heatwave. Then 100 is boiling water, something in everyone's experience. The only reason to argue against Celsius is if you don't understand what negative numbers are.

This means when you say the 20s in Celsius, it means a wide range of temperature.

I have never heard anyone say "in the 20s" in Celsius, so your point is moot.

Centimeters are too small and meters are too big for many everyday object.

Agree with you there (except that centimetres are deprecated and millimeters preferred, which are even worse). The basic SI unit of length should have been chosen to be about a hand length, not an arm length.

English measurements work better for everyday use..... George Orwell mentioned this in relation to metric beer in 1984.

In 1984 Orwell had an old guy complaining about the demise of the pint, saying : "Half-a-litre is not enough and a litre sets my bladder running]", or something like that. When I first read it I assumed he had a point, but in fact half-a-litre is quite close to an Imperial pint as far as drinking goes, about 0.9 of one in fact (1984 was set in the UK). What was the problem again?

Re:Customary measures better for everyday use

[Cro Magnon]

What I like about the temperature scales is, it proves I'm tougher than the Europeans. I can take temps up to 100. They can barely handle 40.

Re:Customary measures better for everyday use

[Anonymous Coward]

Translation: you are used to imperial units and therefore they are by definition superior, regardless of logic or actual convenience.

Re:Customary measures better for everyday use

[david_thornley]

In the Midwest US, its near perfect, most locations go up to around 100 F in summer and go down to near 0 F in winter.

The Midwest US is a fairly large place, with lots of variation in temperature. Where I live, temperatures go from -25 to 100, roughly. If I go north a couple hundred miles, the winter temperatures can get much colder. So, where I live, 0F is an arbitrary number. It's pretty cold, but if I round off a bit and call it -25C I can also understand that as pretty cold. I can still get out and go places when it's -20F, although I'd rather not, so 0F not a measure of human activity or survival.

In the meantime, 0C is the melting point of water, so depending on whether the temperature is positive or negative in Celsius I know whether to expect ice to melt or form. That's convenient.

So, where I live in the Midwest, Fahrenheit is no more convenient than Celcius, regardless of what it is where you live. Most people live in places with a different range of temperatures than you have (the bulk of US residents don't live in the Midwest), and having 0F be about as cold as it gets where Eravnrekaree lives is really, really unimportant to most people.

Americans need to grow up

[bussdriver]

The only practicality is if you can't force stubborn Americans to use metric. Metric is far more practical! Real-world amounts can work better with metric as well:

1 centimeter is about a fingernail. Measure your finger and round to integer millimeters, then you can memorize that and do multiples... or round to centimeters then do multiples of that. Inches you end up in fractions. Who measures by finger joints anyway? 1 inch is useless.

Decimeter = 10 centimeters or about a palm width or fist or foot width... (about 4 inches.) Decimeter is completely forgotten in the USA. Not that people use them much in english as far as I know, people just use decimals of a meter, big ints of millimeters or centimeters.

Feet differ greatly. 1ft long foot? 150 years ago that would be a freakish clown foot; not average. measure your foot with shoe and do multiples. pick your units... mm, metric, depending on your math ability and desired precision. remember decimeters too.

Practical? convert fractional units with differing unit scales... 12 inches in a foot. Inches are fractions of powers of 2. Meters are 3 feet... Miles are a mess plus they have two kinds of mile! Metric is extremely practical to shift... Sure it would be ideal not to use base 10, better to use base 60 for math but it's practical to use base fingers.

Recipes

[Anonymous Coward]

All of the ones I have are in teaspoons, tablespoons, cups, and so forth.

Re:Executive Order 12770—Metric Usage in Fed

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing you gotta understand, we are States united. The federal gov can do what they want, but places like Idaho and Wyoming are not gonna change their mile markers or speed signs.

Re:what if they adopted British system for currenc

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I checked, we use the metric system over here.

--A 38 y/o Brit

Roman imperial numerals

[Max_W]

At least the US switched to the Hindu-Arabic numerals. It would be even harder if not.

Re: what if they adopted British system for curren

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure you do. Now tell me how many stone your old lady weighs.

It just doesn't fucking matter

[Anonymous Coward]

It just doesn't fucking matter, people. Units are arbitrary. Print both types (Customary & SI) on the side of the product and you're golden. This whole discussion is the height of bikeshedding.

Metric is the system used in all science

[Anonymous Coward]

Metric is the system used for science internationally.

Simply put, if the Americans do not want to adopt metric for their citizens, then their citizens will simply not be fluent in the international language of science.

Not my problem. Good luck being 'great', United Scientific Illiterates.

Re:what if they adopted British system for currenc

[Solandri]

It's 12 pence in a shilling, 20 shillings in a pound.

The reason a foot is divided into 12 inches is because it lets you divide a foot evenly in half, thirds, quarters, sixths, or twelfths (eights are also possible with only a half inch). So dividing a foot into 12 inches lets you hit 3 of the most common subdivisions (half, third, quarter), and 4 of the 5 smallest subdivisions (sixth, missing fifth) using only integers.

Dividing units into 10 only gives you 1 of the 3 most common subdivisions (half), and only 2 of the 5 smallest subdivisions (half, fifth) using only integers.

English unit subdivions weren't picked at random. They were selected because they're more practical. A foot is 12 inches for easy subdivision. The English units of volume are based on halving (easy to do if you don't have standardized containers but you do have a scale) - a gallon is 2 quarts, a quart is 2 pints, a pint is 2 cups. An acre is about how much land a peasant could work in a day, and the furlong is defined based on an acre (1 furlong x 1 furlong = 10 acres). Likewise, a mile has 5280 feet because that's 8 furlongs. You'll also note the mile subdivides as integer feet into 10 of the smallest 12 subdivisions (only a 7th and 9th of a mile is not integer feet).

Until standardized measuring instruments became cheap and commonplace, English units were simply superior. Metric is only superior today because the biggest difficulty in modern usage is doing the math by hand (or in your head), not obtaining tools to measure things accurately. Even on computers, if you're doing sequential calculations without using infinite precision, English units are superior to metric - they accrue less roundoff error. Computers store numbers in base 2, and many English unit conversions will resolve down to at least base 4 before hitting a fraction and thus losing precision in binary representation. Except for a half, metric unit conversions don't fit at all into base 2, so lose precision with almost every calculation.

Re:what if they adopted British system for currenc

[ClickOnThis]

British currency went decimal in 1971 (100 pence to the pound.) Before that, there were 12 pence to a shilling, and 20 shillings to a pound.

And there were other quirky amounts:

2 farthings = 1 ha'penny
2 ha'pennies = 1 penny
3 pennies = 1 thrupenny bit (or thrupence)
2 thrupences = 1 sixpence
2 sixpences = 1 shilling (or bob)
2 bob = 1 florin
1 florin + 1 sixpence = half a crown
4 half crowns = 1 ten-bob note
2 ten-bob notes = 1 pound (or 240 pennies)
1 pound + 1 shilling = 1 guinea

Just Stop Already

[Anonymous Coward]

There's always some twerp coming out of the woodwork, saying how they "just really relate to Imperial", for some hyper-specific reason, and only for one or two measures. You know, if it means that much to you then keep Imperial.

Metric won the measurement system wars, a long time ago. The US keeps the Imperial system alive against all comers, giving a pointless finger to Jimmy Carter. The world adopted Metric and it really does not matter whether the US notices. It's just another way in which the US seems increasingly anachronistic.

Coal is the industry of the future! Imperial is here to stay! The world is 6,000 years old and anyone who attests to that can achieve high office!

Re:Executive Order 12770—Metric Usage in Fed

[Anonymous Coward]

They will change the road signs on federal highways (i.e. interstates) if the Federal government requires it. Because, you know, those roads are federal - owned by the federal gov't, funded by the federal gov't, but maintained by the state. And since the federal government regulates interstate commerce, they can require that ALL measuring systems and labels for any goods sold across state lines must be in metric. Good luck selling your Idaho potatoes in 5lb bags, or your Wyoming beef per pound if the federal government decides to regulate it.

Came here looking for FSM posts...

[ClickOnThis]

We're over 200 comments in, and still no mention of The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster's revelation that the cause of global warming is the decline in the number of pirates.

And there we have it my friends. Not only did pirates cause the adoption of the imperial system in the USA, but the metric system causes global warming! Think of the children!!!eleven

[Poe's Law disclaimer: yes, I'm kidding.]

Re:Came here looking for FSM posts...

[ClickOnThis]

To the moderators who scored me Interesting/Informative: I was aiming for Funny, but thanks. Yet I'm confused. I feel like you have turned Poe's Law on me.

Re:Executive Order 12770—Metric Usage in Fed

[Immerman]

Sure we are - but all the federal government needs to do is wave some dollar bills around and the states usually jump into line. Want federal dollars for roadways? Signs must be converted to metric only as part of regular maintenance. Want federal dollars for education? No customary units in schools. Etc.

Quarter pounder's new name

[gyepi]

[...] a McDonald's Quarter Pounder might be known as the McDonald's 113-Grammer, [...]

No, it would be called "Royal with cheese".

Re:Quarter pounder's new name

[famebait]

What would a quarter pounder with cheese be called?

Re:Quarter pounder's new name

[hawk]

In France? Probably, "a Royal with cheese that doesn't stink" :)

hawk

the science part often forgotten

[Anonymous Coward]

What many in the US forget is the science part. There is relation between length, volume, mass and all the rest.
1L of water is 1KG. How heavy is a gallon?
And these are just the obvious ones that use as a non scientist.

And those who tell that it is easier for building also know that a 2x4 is not. 17/32 is larger than a 1/2 is easier than just have things in mm with decimal points?

Re:the science part often forgotten

[serviscope_minor]

How heavy is a gallon?

8lb in america, 10lb in England.

That's a bad choice, since floz/pints/gallons are determined by the volume of a ounce/pound/stone er /ctw? er no ounce/pound/random measure oh? in England? ounce/random measure/random other measure...

OK it's a bad choice since gallons are defined in terms of the volume of a certain number of ounces of water, so the conversion is "easy".

A better question is what's the weight of a cubic foot of water?

Is this the fear Americans have of metric?

[Moldiver]

"If the United States were more like the rest of the world, a McDonald's Quarter Pounder might be known as the McDonald's 113-Grammer, John Henry's 9-pound hammer would be 4.08 kilograms, and any 800-pound gorillas in the room would likely weigh 362 kilos."

Honest - Is that the fear Americans have of metric? Simply do with a 125g burger, a 4kg hammer and a 200kg gorilla (they seldom reach more...).

Re:Executive Order 12770—Metric Usage in Fed

[thinkwaitfast]

I've done 2 coast to coast road trips in the past year and don't recall a single highway mileage sign. I think they could get rid of all of them and very few people would notice. Why no do that instead? And what about all the cities being laid out on 1 mile grids?

One of my favourite quotes

[idleberg]

âoeIn metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigradeâ"which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it. Whereas in the American system, the answer to âoeHow much energy does it take to boil a room-temperature gallon of water?â is âoeGo fuck yourself,â because you canâ(TM)t directly relate any of those quantities.â â" Josh Bazell

The metric system

[idleberg]

“In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade—which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it. Whereas in the American system, the answer to “How much energy does it take to boil a room-temperature gallon of water?” is “Go fuck yourself,” because you can’t directly relate any of those quantities.” — Josh Bazell

Re:The metric system

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is "who gives a shit", because I just turn on my stove to high and the gallon of water boils.

Why a copper mass standard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like it would be hard to derive a ruler from a mass standard. But deriving the metric kilogram using a ruler (and a thermometer) wouldn't be too difficult.

Re: Executive Order 12770—Metric Usage in Fe

[Anonymous Coward]

And that, exactly, is why people oppose taxes being heavily assesed at the Federal level and then 'benevolently' being passed back to State and Local government.

Re:Executive Order 12770—Metric Usage in Fed

[bws111]

You've done 2 coast to coast trips and didn't see a single speed limit sign? Not a single '1 mile to next exit' sign? No 'Big City 43 miles' signs? No 'Deer crossing next 2 miles'? No 'Left lane ends 1000ft'? None? You must be the most unobservant person ever, I hope you weren't driving.

Re: Executive Order 12770—Metric Usage in Fe

[BrianBeaudoin]

On a recent trip I found paths marked in both 10 meter and mile increments. It took a moment to realize my unit of measurement was off.

It's just a language

[PPalmgren]

I find it quite ironic that most of the people who continually complain about the US/SI issue are from bilingual or ESL countries. All the US system is is a language to describe units of measure, nothing more, nothing less. Would you expect everyone in France to abandon the language and start speaking English just because English has become the dominant language? No. The argument then comes about the precision of French as a language and the reason it was used as the language of diplomacy, just like the argument comes for the US system about how it relates more to everyday unit usage in common tasks.

They both describe the same thing with different words, and changing things over would be unnecessarily complex and a overall waste of time and resources for the little possible future gains.

Re:It's just a language

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it quite ironic that most of the people who continually complain about the US/SI issue are from bilingual or ESL countries.

What is an ESL country and what makes you think that most people who complain about archaic and clumsy units are in biliingual or ESL (whatever that may be) countries?

The argument then comes about the precision of French as a language and the reason it was used as the language of diplomacy, just like the argument comes for the US system about how it relates more to everyday unit usage in common tasks.

An obvious difference, however, is that the latter isn't true.

You misquoted

[Anonymous Coward]

he said "deadly". Roads can be dangerous even if they are clear and it's a sunny day, it's all relative. But even if the salted roads are frozen you should take extra caution.

Your subjective scale is off

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been in 49C conditions, it's not "burning hot". It's really unpleasant, but I received no burns. 30C is a very pleasant day if you're in a moderately dry climate like California or Texas, or very dry climates like the Southwest. 35C is pleasant if it's a breezy day at the beach. Comfortable bathwater is in the high-30's, and a hottub is more like 40C.

PS - Sauna at 110C is great in small amounts.

Re:Your subjective scale is off

[Anonymous Coward]

"Burning hot" is figurative.

50C (or 49C, it's the same) is desert temperature. It means you are going to die. You usually get burns from exposure to the Sun, but such heat can kill people, specially the elder and toddlers.

60C is said to exterminate bugs (e.g. inside a car). Someone once killed a house infestation by using a plastic bubble and raising the temp to that level.

35C is very hot. If there is a breeze it will lower your temperature to acceptable levels.

30C without wind is unacceptably hot, too, but that's what people who work in open air must face (e.g. traffic controllers, postmen, trash collectors).

21~23C is the most comfortable range for humans. Men prefer 21C, women like 25C better.

Interior air-conditioning is usually set to 18C~20C, which is good for people in business clothes.

The rule of thumb that fj3k mentioned holds if one divides by ten and truncates the result.

Re:Your subjective scale is off

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't die in 49C heat, going by the so-called rule of thumb, which does not mention rounding up. And you can get burns from the sun even at 0C, because sunburn is from the UV exposure and not the heat. You can get heat stroke by overworking yourself and not being able to cool off, certainly more likely at 50C but possible if you've bundled up for 0C and don't take it off.

Re: Executive Order 12770—Metric Usage in Fe

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you either took a train ride or you're legally blind?

Metric FUD.

[Anonymous Coward]

"the McDonald's 113-Grammer, John Henry's 9-pound hammer would be 4.08 kilograms, and any 800-pound gorillas in the room would likely weigh 362 kilos."

It's stupid shit like this that helped kill the US metric initiative in the 1970s. This makes it sound like metric is pointlessly precise and requires awkward numbers, which is wrong. If we didn't use metric, McDonald's would probably be flogging a 100-gram (*weight before cooking) burger, John Henry would've wielded a simple 4-kilo hammer, and our imaginary mega-gorillas would be some other round number of kilos. Like happened with multi-serving bottles of soda/pop, which were introduced as "2 liters", which is easier to deal with than some oddball fractional number of ounces.

Re: Executive Order 12770—Metric Usage in Fe

[Anonymous Coward]

In Holland we're charged gas and water in m3, not in litres.

Re:Executive Order 12770—Metric Usage in Fed

[Quirkz]

If all the highway signs were only labeled in terms of km, people would get used to using them.

I'm all for the change, but this isn't just signs. All exit numbers would have to change, too. Plus all the signs and maps that reference exit numbers.

Because there's no McDonalds in any other country!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck your moronic US-centric comments.

Guess what they call a "Royale with Cheese" in metric-using english-speaking countries? A fucking Quarter Pounder, you dopey cunt.

Roman Metric

[Anonymous Coward]

And if we kept the roman numeral system, it would be the Cg patty, the Vk hammer, and the Dt gorilla.

Re:It's organic

[Anonymous Coward]

You may need to brush up on your German and/or your English. Maß means measure, not quart. A Maßkrug is not a quarter of something larger. It's simply a standard-sized beer mug and the standard size in Bavaria happens to be 1 L.

Metric=Cheaper International Commerce

[Anonymous Coward]

Savings from going to metric
- A single measurement system worldwide would be great for commerce and international projects. The same reason the US system and the metric system came about in the first place.
- A unified system between US science and US business
- Lower educational requirements for learning measures (less memorization) after one generation. Like going from Roman to Decimal.
- Easier trade between other countries and the US
- Reduced packaging and manufacturing model and parts overheads (ie: cars, thermometers, kitchen appliances)

It would be a great way to reduce trade deficits, but the costs are obvious and the benefits difficult to track (2nd/3rd order).

US Backward (again)

[LinuxLuver]

The US is the only country left that doesn't use the metric system. A testament to rigidity. Also no universal health care. Also no effective gun control. Also no effective democracy. Just.... Backward.

You want imperial units??

[ubrgeek]

Because this is how you get imperial units.

Fractions are the reason

[grumling]

The reason many of us like the imperial system is because it is fairly easy to use fractional measurements. This carries over throughout most of the trades, from cooking to construction.

Please.

[Thad Boyd]

Everybody knows what they call a quarter-pounder with cheese in France, and it's not a 113-Grammer with Cheese.

Metric system is obsolete

[Anonymous Coward]

The metric system is based on powers of ten. This is useful for people who count on their fingers. The "English" system is based primarily on powers of two, and also on having multiple factors. If you buy a pizza, you can divide in half, then each piece in half again, etc. Try dividing it into tenths, or double that, fifths. There is nothing canonical about tenths, perhaps one reason why BCD is not very common any more.

Also, how many joules in a calorie?

Re: Executive Order 12770—Metric Usage in Fe

[Zero__Kelvin]

Where the *hell* did you get that idea? Exit numbers are sequence numbers that don't indicate any distances.

Re:It's organic

[Anonymous Coward]

Before the conversion to metric, the German word Maß was used to denote a quart in liquid measure. In English, "quart" derives from a quarter gallon, so "quart" is not a direct translation of "Maß", but it is the same unit of measure. All those 1-liter mugs used to be 1-quart mugs in the 1800s.

Re: Executive Order 12770—Metric Usage in Fe

[Quirkz]

In most states, the exit numbers are based on the mile marker. I know there are a couple of exceptions (Massachusetts is the only one I know for sure) but nearly all the others are distance. Where do you live that you've never observed this?

Re: Executive Order 12770—Metric Usage in Fe

[SamTombs]

That would depend on where you are. Interstate exits are now supposed to be mileage based, but many states have not yet converted - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....

Re: Executive Order 12770—Metric Usage in Fe

[Quirkz]

Looks like it's mostly the northeast where sequential order is used instead of mileage. Interesting.

The US did 'adopt' the metric system.

[PeterJFraser]

In the late 1933 the US defined the inch to be exactly 2.54 cm. The US maps still use the definition of a inch that was used before the standardization which is about 2.54000508001016 cm.

Re:what if they adopted British system for currenc

[Anonymous Coward]

1 gallon is 4 quarts

Re: Executive Order 12770—Metric Usage in Fe

[ncc74656]

Where the *hell* did you get that idea? Exit numbers are sequence numbers that don't indicate any distances.

On what planet? They very much are tied to distance. Compare exit-number signs to the nearest mile markers next time you're out and about. It's why you see letters used when there's more than one exit within a mile...consider this example along I-15 in Las Vegas, about 42 miles north of the state line.

Re:Executive Order 12770—Metric Usage in Fed

[michael_wojcik]

I've done 2 coast to coast road trips in the past year and don't recall a single highway mileage sign.

They say memory is the first thing to go.

I do a lot of long-distance highway driving. Most or all US interstate highways have mile-marker signs (as well as all the other English-unit signs other posts have mentioned). In dense-traffic areas they sometimes have them for every tenth of a mile. The signs are little vertical rectangles set a few feet above the ground on one side or the other of the roadway.

Now that most interstates label exits by mileage rather than sequentially, the mile markers are quite useful in letting you know how far you are from your exit, if exits themselves are sparse on the section you're driving.

Re: Executive Order 12770—Metric Usage in Fe

[michael_wojcik]

The renumbering of interstate exit signs by distance (usually from the western or southern border of the state for through roads, from the start for spurs, and from one end or the other for loops) started in the late 1980s, I think. You're correct that not all states have adopted it.

I grew up in Massachusetts and first noted the numbering-by-mileage in the Carolinas, I think. It's now quite common, even for non-interstate limited-access highways in some areas. US 127 in Michigan has mileage-numbered exits, for example.

Wikipedia claims:

Nine states as of June 2008 and the District of Columbia use sequential numbering schemes on at least one highway, although the 2009 edition of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) requires these jurisdictions to transition to distance-based numbering.

Of course I haven't bothered to try to verify that.

Forget 1793's pirates. What do 2018 pirates do?

[iq145]

They make copies of DVDs instead of "Cinema discs".

Canada is the same

[DarthVain]

All out road signs and speed limits are metric however, but the rest is the same. In addition we measure personal height and weight in imperial, though I met a British lad in university that swore the proper term was "stones"... I'll add to additional weird measurements we all use: BTU (British Thermal Units, or how many pints it takes a football hooligan to throw a fit), and HP (not House of Parliament sauce, which is quite tasty, but how many Horse Powers something might have, like the ability to neigh, and turn into a unicorn at night when the moon ifs full).

It all pretty much works, even as a hybrid, though socket sets get pretty large. The largest problem I have is more generational. My dad knows and uses temperature measurements in F, whereas I his son really only understands C. Not sure if that has something to do with when that particular change was adopted or what...

Re:Executive Order 12770—Metric Usage in Fed

[Quirkz]

I can't believe I got modded troll for this, when it accurately describes the majority of the system, while the ignorance that replied to me is modded insightful. Stupid Slashdot moderation. People need to get out more.