6 ms·

Why the US never fully adopted the metric system

28 points by miraj 10y ago

dang 10y ago
Url changed from http://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-us-doesnt-use-metric-2016-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-us-doesnt-use-metric-..., which points to this.
matchagaucho 10y ago
The base 12 numbering system is far more practical for trades that transact in halves, thirds, quarters, and sixths. 12 inches, dozen eggs, 24 hours, 360 degree circle is 30 sets of 12... If it weren't for the human justification of having 10 fingers on our hands, the base 10 metric system may not have gained traction at all.
- yoo1I 10y ago
  I wonder how counting the segments of your remaining four fingers with your thumb fell out of style in favour of just counting your fingers. You can do it with one hand, you can easily visualize dividing by two and four, you can count higher (144 if you use two hands), and it clearly looks way cooler.
  - zkhalique 10y ago
    Can you share some links about when it was in style?
    - hugs 10y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal#Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal#Origin
      - jacobolus 10y ago
        “A traditional counting system still in use in many regions of Asia works in this way, and could help to explain the occurrence of numeral systems based on 12 and 60 besides those based on 10, 20 and 5.” Sounds pretty speculative. Has there been historical research about the age of these “traditional counting systems”? I’m skeptical that this is the origin of the Sumerian number system.
      - lucb1e 10y ago
        I feel like I missed out on something big, having never heard about this in my life. As big as if I'd never heard of this unused (for us) Fahrenheit system, except in this case base 12 is objectively superior. I can count binary on my fingers and get much further than with decimal obviously, but it's not very practical or easy to learn. This makes fantastic sense and sounds almost as easy as decimal, the only difference being that it goes a few digits further.
- jacobolus 10y ago
  A base twelve number system is in general much nicer than base ten for basically every purpose... except backwards compatibility with existing tradition. It’s essentially impossible to switch our whole civilization over to base twelve at this point. From what I understand, in places without a highly developed positional number system, fractions for units were generally developed in an ad-hoc way, for convenience, whereas in places with a more entrenched base ten tradition (especially in East Asia where the “abacus” was made of beads on a fixed frame instead of a collection of loose pebbles on a board) fractional units were more often tenths. The metric system takes that tendency to an extreme. In general, the metric system is an example of building a system less well suited to particular use cases, but overall more cohesive and systematic. Since modern people are universally schooled in base ten positional arithmetic, the metric system becomes reasonably familiar and convenient.
- nickserv 10y ago
  The US system isn't bad because it's not base 10, it's bad because it's horribly inconsistent. Quick - how many inches in 1.25 miles?
  - sverige 10y ago
    79,200. Why would you need to know that? Edit: This made me think about the scale of things you're measuring. Roads are generally best measured in miles, not yards, feet, or inches. Some things are better measured in yards (like football fields or concrete (cubic yards)). Some things are best measured in feet, and some things in inches. The avoirdupois system is human sized. The metric system is based on some inaccurate 18th century French calculation of the circumference of the earth, IIRC. Why would you care what your height is in relationship to the circumference of the earth? That never made sense to me. Rarely does it matter if you can convert from one unit to the other. The only exception I can think of is when doubling or halving a recipe - going from teaspoons to tablespoons or liquid ounces can be a pain.
    - Veratyr 10y ago
      Maybe I have to cover a road with 11 inch long bricks and I need to know how many to buy? The problem is that although perhaps certain units may be good for measuring certain things, the things you use those measurements for will frequently involve things that use different units. To take your road example again, what if I want to find out how many revolutions it takes a wheel with a 4 foot circumference to travel a mile? What if I want to find out how many yard long strides it takes to go down a road? The metric units are interoperable. That's their big advantage.
  - matchagaucho 10y ago
    Architects and Carpenters use inches and feet because they're constantly dividing by 2,3,4, and 6. Converting to miles is not practical.
  - MasterYoda 10y ago
    Inconsistent is a good description. It feels like a rollercoaster... https://morganalyx.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/metric-system.jpg https://morganalyx.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/metric-system...
- anotherevan 10y ago
  And Betamax was vastly superior.
- gmiller123456 10y ago
  Your argument would make sense if our system were actually base 12, or if we actually worked in halves or thirds of feet. Or if we ever had a reason to convert feet to eggs, or feet to hours. No, the base changes for every unit of measurement. Inches are divided into 16ths, feet into 12ths, yards, into thirds, miles into 1760ths. Inches are the worst as the base changes depending on how accurate you want to be, or if the fraction can be simplified, 3/8ths 7/16ths, 15/32nds. And of course all of the numbers used to count them are base 10. The metric system uses base 10 all around. Not because we have 10 fingers, but because that's the system most widely used.
barney54 10y ago
I used to think the US would go metric, but more recently I'm not sure. The biggest question is what is the advantage for every day purposes? For example, a foot is a more useful measurement than the meter. Fahrenheit is more useful than Celsius (I know Celisus is not technically metric). Pounds are more useful than kilos (a best it's a wash). I don't see why grams beat ounces. I just don't see the value of metric for everyday purposes. For science, yes, but not for everyday measurement.
- barney54 10y ago
  I see I have been downvoted a few times. What's your argument? Where do you disagree? I'd like to hear an alternative viewpoint.
  - JorgeGT 10y ago
    I didn't downvote, but just curious: why do you say pounds are more useful than kilos?
  - bajsejohannes 10y ago
    I'm guessing it's because you didn't back up your arguments. Why is a foot more useful than a meter? Why is Fahrenheit is more useful than Celsius? Why are pounds more useful than kilos? So let me kick it back to you: What's your argument? Metric and imperial are both pretty arbitrary; one strong argument for metric is just to get an international standard.
    - wolfgke 10y ago
      > one strong argument for metric is just to get an international standard. And that they are easy to convert among each other (simply powers of 10). And that there is a complete system of units (SI) that is based on it (what is the imperial unit of force, power, voltage, current,...? etc.).
      - thaumasiotes 10y ago
hugs 10y ago
One fascinating thing I discovered a few years ago: Lego Technic is a combination of both metric and imperial units. Hole centers are 8mm apart from each other. But hole diameters are 4.85mm, perfectly sized for a 10-32 (size based on inches) screw.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  Well now I spent WAY too much time reading about LEGO dimensions. http://www.robertcailliau.eu/Alphabetical/L/Lego/Dimensions/General%20Considerations/ http://www.robertcailliau.eu/Alphabetical/L/Lego/Dimensions/... Looks like Technic hole diameters are set between between letting the poles spin and having brick pegs stick.
Quanttek 10y ago
Are you that weird luke guy from bitcoin?
- dang 10y ago
  Please don't do this here. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11931097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11931097 and marked it off-topic.
tuna-piano 10y ago
Whenever a non-American brings this up to me as a negative point about America, I love saying the following: "There are two types of countries in the world: Those that use the metric system and those that have been to the Moon.(1)" (1)I purposely leave Liberia out of it. Unfortunately, I think it still might be a few years before the LSA gets to the moon.
- mmastrac 10y ago
  Even Myanmar is moving to the metric system! :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myanmar_units_of_measurement#Adoption_of_SI_.28Metric.29_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myanmar_units_of_measurement#A...
- brightball 10y ago
  Was actually coming here to post that. :-)
- to3m 10y ago
  See, especially, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_1 - the USSR being famous for its use of the US Customary system.
  - shermozle 10y ago
    "System" makes it sound a lot more cohesive than it is. It's more a "collection" than a "system".
- lmcinnes 10y ago
  You should really specify landing a man on the moon. Many countries, including Russia and Japan have been to the moon with probes and rovers.
  - adventured 10y ago
    Only five individual nations out of 196 have done so. I wouldn't call that many.
massysett 10y ago
The EU takes pride in multilingualism. Bilingualism is said to be a core part of Canadian identity. Children are encouraged to learn multiple languages. Yet for some reason diversity in measurement systems is bad? The US uses two measurement systems. As a practical matter, those who need to use metric do so. Many sporting events are metric. Much commerce is metric. Food labels are metric. I have never seen why this is a problem. Most other folks don't either, which is why we haven't chosen to do stupid stuff like run around and change road signs or insist that people use particular measurements. Oh, and the story about how the spacecraft crashed does not make a convincing case. Any aerospace contractor worth its salt would check all its units of measure. Being entirely metric does nothing to alleviate this burden. Reporting a measure in centimeters rather than meters will get you the same problem. Units of measure must be labeled, period.
- Oletros 10y ago
  > Reporting a measure in centimeters rather than meters will get you the same problem. Units of measure must be labeled, period. cm to meter is not the same that feet to meter
- adventured 10y ago
  In terms of first order importance, efficiency in language is even more important than efficiency in measurement systems, it's fascinating how that's ignored (as you noted, it's artificially excused away using culture or nationalism). The EU absorbs a massive cost by maintaining dozens of unnecessary languages. In fact it's so bad that a full 1/2 of all the people in the EU are unable to communicate with each other properly: they speak no common language. It's one of the more obvious weaknesses in their economic competitiveness.
- dalke 10y ago
  Some people learn a new language or learn about a different culture to get some understanding of a different perspective on life. There is very little interesting or informative about learning diverse unit systems. Now, history of unit systems is interesting, but that's more like learning an aspect of other cultures than about measurement systems.
zhte415 10y ago
Ask anyone form the UK their height, weight, or for a glass of beer. Feet/inches, stone (America never really adopted that) and some scale of pint would be the reply. Yet ask them to do a calculation in these measurements would result in looks of scorn, "THAT'S INSANE' in the words of Moss from IT Crowd. Because we calculate in metric, and that's because all textbooks post late 70s were in metric and 'new pence' [1]. Fahrenheit is largely dead as a common measurement in day-to-day conversation, pint the least likely to disappear, as it's treated as a countable unit, nor an interval scale; on that matter, probably stone too. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_(British_pre-decimal_coin) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_(British_pre-decimal_coi...
- anotherevan 10y ago
  In an Australian pub you can ask for a pint, or a pot, or a schooner, but ask any bartender how big that is and they'll tell you in millilitres.
anotherevan 10y ago
Rather than reiterating a lot of what I've said previously, I'm reposting my greatest hits from previous discussions on this topic: hope that is okay. § The US rarely uses metric in it's popular culture. Weather reports are in Fahrenheit, movies almost always use miles and pounds. By any measure of cultural output that you export that I've seen (and Australia is a huge consumer of your popular culture) you do not use metric. § In Australia we started metrication in 1971[1] with 1974 being the effective tipping point when all road signs were changed. Being born in the early 70's, I have a rough understanding of imperial measurement units. I can roughly understand if something is a few inches or a few feet, but can never remember how many inches in a foot, and have no concept of relation between feet and miles. Miles I understand as a bit over 1.5kms. The only length measurements we tend to still give in imperial is a person's height in feet and inches. The concept that over six foot is tall, and under five is getting to be short (for men at least) has such utility that it's stuck. Official documents will use metric though, usually centimetres. Weight is similar. Kilograms rule, except when talking about the weight of newborns which will still often be given in pounds and ounces informally. But give me anything else in pounds and I have no idea (very frustrating when that happens in movies.) Similarly Celsius rules. I know 100°F is a hot day, but wont boil an egg, and 0°F is colder than a mother-in-law's kiss, but those are rough approximations, and anything between those two I have to convert. Gallons is a foreign language. However all the colloquialisms such as giving an inch and taking a mile are still common. And yet somehow despite all this, the world continued to spin. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Australia § Just an interesting aside, measurements in construction are almost always given in either metres or millimetres, never centimetres (at least in Australia.) So that would be 914.4mm and 1219.2mm respectively (or 1.2192m I guess). The wisdom of this was explained to me by my builder father that metres and millimetres are orders of magnitude far enough apart that you can usually figure out which is which without too much difficulty in a specification even if they are not annotated properly. Centimetres fall close enough to in between that it can be confusing. Plus only using two standard units of measure (one for small stuff, another for large) is less potential confusion then using three. § Now if we could only stop anybody using m/d/y date formats...

28 points by miraj 10y ago

dang 10y ago

Url changed from http://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-us-doesnt-use-metric-2016-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-us-doesnt-use-metric-..., which points to this.

matchagaucho 10y ago

The base 12 numbering system is far more practical for trades that transact in halves, thirds, quarters, and sixths. 12 inches, dozen eggs, 24 hours, 360 degree circle is 30 sets of 12... If it weren't for the human justification of having 10 fingers on our hands, the base 10 metric system may not have gained traction at all.

yoo1I 10y ago
I wonder how counting the segments of your remaining four fingers with your thumb fell out of style in favour of just counting your fingers. You can do it with one hand, you can easily visualize dividing by two and four, you can count higher (144 if you use two hands), and it clearly looks way cooler.
- zkhalique 10y ago
  Can you share some links about when it was in style?
  - hugs 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal#Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal#Origin
    - jacobolus 10y ago
      “A traditional counting system still in use in many regions of Asia works in this way, and could help to explain the occurrence of numeral systems based on 12 and 60 besides those based on 10, 20 and 5.” Sounds pretty speculative. Has there been historical research about the age of these “traditional counting systems”? I’m skeptical that this is the origin of the Sumerian number system.
    - lucb1e 10y ago
      I feel like I missed out on something big, having never heard about this in my life. As big as if I'd never heard of this unused (for us) Fahrenheit system, except in this case base 12 is objectively superior. I can count binary on my fingers and get much further than with decimal obviously, but it's not very practical or easy to learn. This makes fantastic sense and sounds almost as easy as decimal, the only difference being that it goes a few digits further.
jacobolus 10y ago
A base twelve number system is in general much nicer than base ten for basically every purpose... except backwards compatibility with existing tradition. It’s essentially impossible to switch our whole civilization over to base twelve at this point. From what I understand, in places without a highly developed positional number system, fractions for units were generally developed in an ad-hoc way, for convenience, whereas in places with a more entrenched base ten tradition (especially in East Asia where the “abacus” was made of beads on a fixed frame instead of a collection of loose pebbles on a board) fractional units were more often tenths. The metric system takes that tendency to an extreme. In general, the metric system is an example of building a system less well suited to particular use cases, but overall more cohesive and systematic. Since modern people are universally schooled in base ten positional arithmetic, the metric system becomes reasonably familiar and convenient.
nickserv 10y ago
The US system isn't bad because it's not base 10, it's bad because it's horribly inconsistent. Quick - how many inches in 1.25 miles?
- sverige 10y ago
  79,200. Why would you need to know that? Edit: This made me think about the scale of things you're measuring. Roads are generally best measured in miles, not yards, feet, or inches. Some things are better measured in yards (like football fields or concrete (cubic yards)). Some things are best measured in feet, and some things in inches. The avoirdupois system is human sized. The metric system is based on some inaccurate 18th century French calculation of the circumference of the earth, IIRC. Why would you care what your height is in relationship to the circumference of the earth? That never made sense to me. Rarely does it matter if you can convert from one unit to the other. The only exception I can think of is when doubling or halving a recipe - going from teaspoons to tablespoons or liquid ounces can be a pain.
  - Veratyr 10y ago
    Maybe I have to cover a road with 11 inch long bricks and I need to know how many to buy? The problem is that although perhaps certain units may be good for measuring certain things, the things you use those measurements for will frequently involve things that use different units. To take your road example again, what if I want to find out how many revolutions it takes a wheel with a 4 foot circumference to travel a mile? What if I want to find out how many yard long strides it takes to go down a road? The metric units are interoperable. That's their big advantage.
- matchagaucho 10y ago
  Architects and Carpenters use inches and feet because they're constantly dividing by 2,3,4, and 6. Converting to miles is not practical.
- MasterYoda 10y ago
  Inconsistent is a good description. It feels like a rollercoaster... https://morganalyx.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/metric-system.jpg https://morganalyx.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/metric-system...
anotherevan 10y ago
And Betamax was vastly superior.
gmiller123456 10y ago
Your argument would make sense if our system were actually base 12, or if we actually worked in halves or thirds of feet. Or if we ever had a reason to convert feet to eggs, or feet to hours. No, the base changes for every unit of measurement. Inches are divided into 16ths, feet into 12ths, yards, into thirds, miles into 1760ths. Inches are the worst as the base changes depending on how accurate you want to be, or if the fraction can be simplified, 3/8ths 7/16ths, 15/32nds. And of course all of the numbers used to count them are base 10. The metric system uses base 10 all around. Not because we have 10 fingers, but because that's the system most widely used.

barney54 10y ago

I used to think the US would go metric, but more recently I'm not sure. The biggest question is what is the advantage for every day purposes? For example, a foot is a more useful measurement than the meter. Fahrenheit is more useful than Celsius (I know Celisus is not technically metric). Pounds are more useful than kilos (a best it's a wash). I don't see why grams beat ounces. I just don't see the value of metric for everyday purposes. For science, yes, but not for everyday measurement.

barney54 10y ago
I see I have been downvoted a few times. What's your argument? Where do you disagree? I'd like to hear an alternative viewpoint.
- JorgeGT 10y ago
  I didn't downvote, but just curious: why do you say pounds are more useful than kilos?
- bajsejohannes 10y ago
  I'm guessing it's because you didn't back up your arguments. Why is a foot more useful than a meter? Why is Fahrenheit is more useful than Celsius? Why are pounds more useful than kilos? So let me kick it back to you: What's your argument? Metric and imperial are both pretty arbitrary; one strong argument for metric is just to get an international standard.
  - wolfgke 10y ago
    > one strong argument for metric is just to get an international standard. And that they are easy to convert among each other (simply powers of 10). And that there is a complete system of units (SI) that is based on it (what is the imperial unit of force, power, voltage, current,...? etc.).
    - thaumasiotes 10y ago

hugs 10y ago

One fascinating thing I discovered a few years ago: Lego Technic is a combination of both metric and imperial units. Hole centers are 8mm apart from each other. But hole diameters are 4.85mm, perfectly sized for a 10-32 (size based on inches) screw.

kalleboo 10y ago
Well now I spent WAY too much time reading about LEGO dimensions. http://www.robertcailliau.eu/Alphabetical/L/Lego/Dimensions/General%20Considerations/ http://www.robertcailliau.eu/Alphabetical/L/Lego/Dimensions/... Looks like Technic hole diameters are set between between letting the poles spin and having brick pegs stick.

Quanttek 10y ago

Are you that weird luke guy from bitcoin?

dang 10y ago
Please don't do this here. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11931097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11931097 and marked it off-topic.

tuna-piano 10y ago

Whenever a non-American brings this up to me as a negative point about America, I love saying the following: "There are two types of countries in the world: Those that use the metric system and those that have been to the Moon.(1)" (1)I purposely leave Liberia out of it. Unfortunately, I think it still might be a few years before the LSA gets to the moon.

mmastrac 10y ago
Even Myanmar is moving to the metric system! :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myanmar_units_of_measurement#Adoption_of_SI_.28Metric.29_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myanmar_units_of_measurement#A...
brightball 10y ago
Was actually coming here to post that. :-)
to3m 10y ago
See, especially, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_1 - the USSR being famous for its use of the US Customary system.
- shermozle 10y ago
  "System" makes it sound a lot more cohesive than it is. It's more a "collection" than a "system".
lmcinnes 10y ago
You should really specify landing a man on the moon. Many countries, including Russia and Japan have been to the moon with probes and rovers.
- adventured 10y ago
  Only five individual nations out of 196 have done so. I wouldn't call that many.

massysett 10y ago

The EU takes pride in multilingualism. Bilingualism is said to be a core part of Canadian identity. Children are encouraged to learn multiple languages. Yet for some reason diversity in measurement systems is bad? The US uses two measurement systems. As a practical matter, those who need to use metric do so. Many sporting events are metric. Much commerce is metric. Food labels are metric. I have never seen why this is a problem. Most other folks don't either, which is why we haven't chosen to do stupid stuff like run around and change road signs or insist that people use particular measurements. Oh, and the story about how the spacecraft crashed does not make a convincing case. Any aerospace contractor worth its salt would check all its units of measure. Being entirely metric does nothing to alleviate this burden. Reporting a measure in centimeters rather than meters will get you the same problem. Units of measure must be labeled, period.

Oletros 10y ago
> Reporting a measure in centimeters rather than meters will get you the same problem. Units of measure must be labeled, period. cm to meter is not the same that feet to meter
adventured 10y ago
In terms of first order importance, efficiency in language is even more important than efficiency in measurement systems, it's fascinating how that's ignored (as you noted, it's artificially excused away using culture or nationalism). The EU absorbs a massive cost by maintaining dozens of unnecessary languages. In fact it's so bad that a full 1/2 of all the people in the EU are unable to communicate with each other properly: they speak no common language. It's one of the more obvious weaknesses in their economic competitiveness.
dalke 10y ago
Some people learn a new language or learn about a different culture to get some understanding of a different perspective on life. There is very little interesting or informative about learning diverse unit systems. Now, history of unit systems is interesting, but that's more like learning an aspect of other cultures than about measurement systems.

zhte415 10y ago

Ask anyone form the UK their height, weight, or for a glass of beer. Feet/inches, stone (America never really adopted that) and some scale of pint would be the reply. Yet ask them to do a calculation in these measurements would result in looks of scorn, "THAT'S INSANE' in the words of Moss from IT Crowd. Because we calculate in metric, and that's because all textbooks post late 70s were in metric and 'new pence' [1]. Fahrenheit is largely dead as a common measurement in day-to-day conversation, pint the least likely to disappear, as it's treated as a countable unit, nor an interval scale; on that matter, probably stone too. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_(British_pre-decimal_coin) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_(British_pre-decimal_coi...

anotherevan 10y ago
In an Australian pub you can ask for a pint, or a pot, or a schooner, but ask any bartender how big that is and they'll tell you in millilitres.

anotherevan 10y ago

Rather than reiterating a lot of what I've said previously, I'm reposting my greatest hits from previous discussions on this topic: hope that is okay. § The US rarely uses metric in it's popular culture. Weather reports are in Fahrenheit, movies almost always use miles and pounds. By any measure of cultural output that you export that I've seen (and Australia is a huge consumer of your popular culture) you do not use metric. § In Australia we started metrication in 1971[1] with 1974 being the effective tipping point when all road signs were changed. Being born in the early 70's, I have a rough understanding of imperial measurement units. I can roughly understand if something is a few inches or a few feet, but can never remember how many inches in a foot, and have no concept of relation between feet and miles. Miles I understand as a bit over 1.5kms. The only length measurements we tend to still give in imperial is a person's height in feet and inches. The concept that over six foot is tall, and under five is getting to be short (for men at least) has such utility that it's stuck. Official documents will use metric though, usually centimetres. Weight is similar. Kilograms rule, except when talking about the weight of newborns which will still often be given in pounds and ounces informally. But give me anything else in pounds and I have no idea (very frustrating when that happens in movies.) Similarly Celsius rules. I know 100°F is a hot day, but wont boil an egg, and 0°F is colder than a mother-in-law's kiss, but those are rough approximations, and anything between those two I have to convert. Gallons is a foreign language. However all the colloquialisms such as giving an inch and taking a mile are still common. And yet somehow despite all this, the world continued to spin. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Australia § Just an interesting aside, measurements in construction are almost always given in either metres or millimetres, never centimetres (at least in Australia.) So that would be 914.4mm and 1219.2mm respectively (or 1.2192m I guess). The wisdom of this was explained to me by my builder father that metres and millimetres are orders of magnitude far enough apart that you can usually figure out which is which without too much difficulty in a specification even if they are not annotated properly. Centimetres fall close enough to in between that it can be confusing. Plus only using two standard units of measure (one for small stuff, another for large) is less potential confusion then using three. § Now if we could only stop anybody using m/d/y date formats...