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Is US's consistent refusal to adopt something more common like the metric system the ultimate display of "Not invented here" syndrome? (I know imperial was inve

Is US's consistent refusal to adopt something more common like the metric system the ultimate display of "Not invented here" syndrome? (I know imperial was invented by the British, but it's largely just the US left using it) Feels like everyone would be better off if the switch just happened already, as it'll happen one day or another. But they keep on fighting it off, for some reason. Or does the imperial system have some advantage over metric (not including the fact that everything in the US is already using imperial) that makes it infeasible to change?

jacobolus 6y ago
> In 1793, Thomas Jefferson requested artifacts from France that could be used to adopt the metric system in the United States, and Joseph Dombey was sent from France with a standard kilogram. Before reaching the United States, Dombey's ship was blown off course by a storm and captured by pirates, and he died in captivity on Montserrat. More seriously, blame the Reagan administration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_Stat...
- capableweb 6y ago
  Thanks for that link! Seems to outline that there has been many attempts, some still ongoing, but not making a lot of progress. Seems weird to fault all of these failed attempts to the Reagan administration, but I guess that's also an American thing to do, attribute issues to one group of people, not the one you're in, but "the other group".
  - rovr138 6y ago
    > but not making a lot of progress That part reminded me of Puerto Rico. Streets are marked with kilometer markers, rural addresses are street and km and hectometers. Also everyone miles for everything else. I’m actually not sure which conversion failed.
    - rdl 6y ago
      And land is measured in "spanish acres" as well (Cuerda).
      - tomjakubowski 6y ago
        And two different scales of magnitudes (US-style "short scale", and "long scale" from Spanish colonial days), meaning two different meanings for millions and billions! https://metricpioneer.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/long-scale-and-short-scale-how-much-is-a-billion-it-depends-where-you-live/ https://metricpioneer.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/long-scale-an...
        rovr138 6y ago
        And not a small difference! And people misuse it all the time.
      - rovr138 6y ago
        We have a bit of a mess back home
FoeNyx 6y ago
> I know imperial was invented by the British, but it's largely just the US left using it According to wikipedia, the US do not use the "Imperial System" but the "United States customary units" and they are not exactly equivalent, although they both derive from the "English units ".¹ Also, from the article: "The international foot is exactly 0.3048 of a meter". And it seems the international yard and pound are defined using the SI units as the reference.² (Edit: So by transitivity they also are defined using caesium-133 atom's radiation, light speed in vacuum and Planck constant.) ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_imperial_and_US_customary_measurement_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_imperial_and... ² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_yard_and_pound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_yard_and_pound
- masklinn 6y ago
  Basically, US Customary is english units pre Imperial standardisation. Then in 1959 the major non-metric countries (I want to say US, UK, SA, AU and NZ?) unified their units under the "International Yards and Pounds". This metrified the definitions of various non-metric units. So for all the units with an "international" version, "US customary" and "imperial" are now the same thing (though the pre-international versions might still be used in some contexts e.g. US surveyor units are, in fact, pre-international US customary units), and there are units which were not unified, most notably units of volume which remain different in the US and in imperial dominions.
Theodores 6y ago
Customary Units and Imperial measurements are bad, we all know that. However, play Devils Advocate for a moment to see the benefits of these allegedly backwards measurements. Take the foot. This is twelve inches. You can divide a foot into thirds or sixths without any recurring numbers. This is of practical application. If you are working with some DIY task and everything is in Imperial measurements then it all works out as easy as Lego pieces.
- ithkuil 6y ago
  Yeah, duodecimal systems (base 12) rock! But is the customary units system consistently duodecimal? Iirc it's not, but I might misremember.
  - jabl 6y ago
    No. E.g. a foot is 12 inches, but a yard is 3 feet.
    - masklinn 6y ago
      And a chain is 22 yards and a furlong is 10 chains and a mile is 8 furlong (which is why a mile is 1760 or 5280 feet.
  - saalweachter 6y ago
    It's mostly binary -- 16 ounces in a pound, 16 drams in an ounce, 8 pints in a gallon, 8 furlongs in a mile, 4 rods in a chain. Then you've got a few odd ones, like 10 chains in a furlong or 22 yards in a chain or 3 feet in a yard. In general, the secret to happiness in customary units is to only ever work in a single unit and never convert between them. If you are working in construction, you probably only ever want to deal in inches. Ceilings are 96 or 120 inches tall, doors are 32 or 36 inches wide, etc etc etc. The moment you start using two units at once you are going to have a bad time, so if you pay attention people tend to only use one, even if it confuses people who don't know why doors are 80 inches high instead of 6 feet 8 inches.
  - ithkuil 6y ago
Evidlo 6y ago
I have tools which are almost all customary units. Sockets, Allen wrenches, calipers, wrenches, drill bits, taps/dies. All customary. Its just what's available used here.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  Can't you convert the measurement from customary to metric, or from metric to customary? Why does it matter what system the tool was designed for? Obviously anything that can be measured in customary can also be measured in metric.
  - SiempreViernes 6y ago
    The exact sizes are all arbitrary, in practice the are all in even fractions of some base unit: imperial an metric tools simply fit together poorly because they’ve been made in slightly different sizes
  - s_tec 6y ago
    The US uses different bolt threads than the rest of the world. Just today I had to buy an 1/4 inch long 8-32 threaded screw to fix our stroller. The 8 refers to a standard diameter in the US system, and the 32 means "32 threads per inch".
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      How does this work now that almost all products are global and most are manufactured outside the US? Does a Ford engine get designed in both customary for in the US and in metric for the rest of the world?
      - toast0 6y ago
        At this point, new cars are 100% metric, with the exception of tire sizes, which are still inches (usually integer inches, sometimes half inches too), and have been for a pretty long time (switching seems to have started in the late 80s / early 90s where cars would have both types of fasteners, and by the end of the 90s, it was just metric). This probably has something to do with the increasingly global supply chains, and increasingly global parts suppliers. Oh, and the speedometer and the odometer. The digital ones are probably counting meters and converting though.
iNerdier 6y ago
It’s even more confusing than that. They use the British system prior to imperial standardisation, so one has both US customary and imperial units of inch etc measurements. Which is why volumes and amount of sub units are different between the two.
- noneeeed 6y ago
  It gets particularly confusing when people start comparing mpg for US and British cars, as the two gallons are not the same, I've seen so many arguments online where people are flat out comparing differenteasures and assuming they were the same.
  - masklinn 6y ago
    > It gets particularly confusing when people start comparing mpg for US and British cars, as the two gallons are not the same TBF mpg is a terrible unit to compare car efficiency regardless of which gallon you use. It's only more convenient to evaluate the range you have on a tank.
    - noneeeed 6y ago
      I'm obviously missing something. Why would distance travelled on a unit of fuel be a bad way to measure the efficiency of a car? I know that such measures are always imprecise due to different driving styles/conditions etc. So what is a better way to measure the efficiency of a car?
      - masklinn 6y ago
        > I'm obviously missing something. Why would distance travelled on a unit of fuel be a bad way to measure the efficiency of a car? Because it has a sublinear relationship to absolute efficiency: an 11mpg car is significantly more efficient than a 10mpg car, while a 41mpg car much less so in relation to a 40mpg car: both provide an extra mile per gallon, which translates into a 10% and 2.5% increase in efficiency respectively. > So what is a better way to measure the efficiency of a car? gpm (aka L/100km which is what's used in most metric countries). It's less convenient when you know how much fuel you have and want to know what distance you can expect, but it's way more convenient to compare efficiencies, as well as to calculate how much fuel you'll need for a given trip: the examples above are 21.4L/100, 23.5L/100, 5.7 L/100km and 5.9 L/100km. From this, it's obvious that the absolute gain in efficiency is much greater going from 10 to 11 (2L/100km economy) than from 40 to 41 (0.2L/100km)
0BADAC1D 6y ago
a machinist told me that when he had to start doing metric stuff it was all the same dimensions, but converted to metric. so instead of 1/64" he had to mill 0.396875mm. even if everything new designed was in metric with fairly round numbers, you still have a ton of existing stuff designed with imperial units that needs to be taken into account and designed around. the result in some cases is that you get none of the benefits from metric or imperial. and your machinist needs to buy new equipment. the main thing metric has going for it is that it's the same radix as our counting system and is consistant (as opposed to base12 and then base5280).
- corty 6y ago
  There are a few more advantages, especially when machining. There is a large system of standardized metric parts, e.g. washers, screws, etc. available on the cheap because they are needed everywhere. Whereas the US mess of screw sizes, denominations and threads produces a nonending headache of unavailability, high price and non-fitting but similar-looking parts. Yes, the changeover will be ugly and involve redoing all your plans at some point. But after that you will see how much you are missing out...
  - 0BADAC1D 6y ago
    there's a bicycle suspension company that's all-metric except for a single screw to adjust tension. apparently the metric screws had too steep of threads and didnt allow for the level of fine adjustment they wanted. clearly we should create another standard to encompass all these cases and alleviate confusion.
    - corty 6y ago
      There is a standard for metric threads with a finer inclination/pitch, no need to create anything special for the purpose: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_metric_screw_thread https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_metric_screw_thread
- alkonaut 6y ago
  > the main thing metric has going for it is that it's the same radix I think this is the thing that is usually lost. Metric isn't about the units. No one cares whether the length unit is the size of a finger or a foot. What's important is the radix, ease of conversion conversion and relation between the units of different dimension. A swimming pool can be 10m long and 5m and 2m deep. That means its volume is 100m^3 or 100 thousand liters and the mass of the water is a hundred tons. There are 3 coke cans in a liter (or kilo) so the pool could room 300k coke cans. Quick in-your-head conversions like that are so difficult in some cases with pounds, gallons, fl.ounces etc.
lisper 6y ago
It's political, just like wearing masks to prevent covid infection has become politicized. Both masks and meters have become associated with left-wing intellectual elites, and so the right reflexively rebels against them. EDIT: to all the people downvoting this comment without explaining why: you are actually proving my point.
- new2628 6y ago
  You forgot the step where left-wing intellectual elites ridiculed people for wearing masks as it "doesn't protect anyway and creates a false sense of security". If anything, I would imagine masks to be a prepper thing, so I would have thought more popular on the right, but I guess there is no logic anymore.
  - lisper 6y ago
    Masks don't protect the person who wears them, they protect the people around the people who wear them, so they only work if everyone wears them. In the early days of the pandemic there weren't enough masks for the general public (because the Trump administration had sent a significant portion of the U.S. supply to China [1]) so there was a desire to reserve the limited remaining supply for health care workers. Comments like yours which obfuscate basic facts like this are a perfect example of the kind of politicization I'm talking about. [1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/us-tons-ppe-china/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/us-tons-ppe-china/
    - naasking 6y ago
      Of course masks protect people who wear them. Perhaps the protection is "minimal", but that's not zero.
      - lisper 6y ago
        Oh, good grief. So I left out the word "mainly". That in no way refutes my point, which is that this entire discussion has been politicized. And the fact that you are picking at such a tiny nit just further proves my point.
currymj 6y ago
in the US, at this point, advocating for metrification is associated with a sort of odd, fringe type of political figure. See the recent presidental campaign of Lincoln Chafee. Or the very humorous "Stonecutters' Song" from the Simpsons (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoSLiHKrzRU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoSLiHKrzRU), in which a parody of the Freemasons confesses to covering up UFOs, sabotaging electric cars, and suppressing the metric system.
- ghaff 6y ago
  And whatever some people on forums like this may think about it, there is zero widespread interest in a wholesale switch to metric in the US. Where there's an advantage to using metric like in science and engineering, people use metric (mostly). For day to day life, they mostly use US units and they work fine. As someone else noted, even if you look at the UK, they use the metric system more than the US does, but they also still use imperial units in a lot of contexts--including some we don't use in the US like stones.
- throw0101a 6y ago
  > in the US, at this point, advocating for metrification is associated with a sort of odd, fringe type of political figure. Tucker Carlson of Fox News thinks that metric system is a form of tyranny: > CARLSON: Almost every nation on Earth has fallen under the yoke of tyranny -- the metric system -- from Beijing to Buenos Aires from Lusaka to London, the people the world have been forced to measure their environment in millimeters and kilograms. * https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/can-the-us-continue-to-stand-alone-against-the-metric-system https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/can-the-us-continue-to-st... Nothing new, with things going back to 1977: > Dean Krakel thinks metric is more about Marxism than measurement. As director of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma, Krakel is waging a war against metric on political grounds. In this 1977 clip from As It Happens, he says it reflects "the philosophical way communists want one of everything" - one world, one monetary system, one educational system and, now, one measurement system. "We're Americans, we're different. We're individualistic, we're strong," he says with passion. * https://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/is-the-metric-system-a-communist-plot https://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/is-the-metric-system-a-com...
vikramkr 6y ago
Everything is already made to imperial, people are already comfortable using imperial. And the US is in an international position of strength in that we arent manufacturing amd selling things to other countries, we are buying goods made elsewhere, so we're the ones generating the demand. We dont need to standardize with the rest of the world in the same way, and so we dont bother with the effort. In the areas where standardization is required, such as research and development, you'll see that scientists already use metric. The US actually originally planned to use metric, but if I recall correctly, the guy thomas Jefferson had invited to bring metric standards to the US ended up getting captured by pirates, so we never had the standards needed to switch and just didnt bother. But he time metrification was sweeping the globe, we'd already industrialized. And one advantage that imperial has over metric - there are more multiples of 12. 12 is more divisible. A third of a foot is 4 inches, while a third of a meter is 33.333333333333333 etc centimeters
- kergonath 6y ago
  I never get this point. Why does it matter that 100 is not divisible by 3? What makes a third of a metre so special compared to 3 tenths? Most things do not want to fit neatly on integers on one scale, you need decimal points anyway. In general contexts, either 30, 33, or 35 cm are perfectly acceptable. When accuracy is required, we use millimetres anyway (or micrometres, or nanometres, or angstroms...). I really don’t see how more integers factors is an advantage that outweighs the clusterfuck that are conversion factors between points, inches, feet, miles, and the other stupid units, or the fact that a nautical mile is not a mile. Besides, there’s absolutely nothing stopping anyone from using “a third of a metre” as a unit. For example, it’s common to have a line for 1/3 l in measuring cups.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    Divisibility. Using base-ten units, you can divide precisely by only 2 and 5. Not only are 1/3 and 2/3 not integer subdivisions of ten, they're not even precise decimals, but asre repeating. Under base 12, there are precise subdivisions of 2, 3, 4, and 6 units. Under base 30 you can evenly divide by these as well as 10 and 15. Under base 60 (a commonly used measurement base, a usage example will come to you in time), subdivisions are the above, plus 12, 20, and 30. For practical use and arrangement, these can be highly useful capabilities. In angular measure (base 360, 60*4), there are divisions which relate to trigonometric functions but not decimal scales. And to truly transcent the rational there are radian measures based on pi. Under metric, you can still come up with precise divisibility, but only by disposing of the base-ten rationality. E.g., using 60cm or 60kg as a division basis. Ultimately, base ten is an arbitrary anatomical accident.
analog31 6y ago
It has ceased to matter. Most new products sold in the US use metric fasteners. A typical family has little or no use for imperial tools. There are some weird hold-out standards such as spark plug wrenches, but those have only one use anyway. The imperial units are all defined in terms of metric units. There's no standard inch sitting in a vault somewhere. Machine tools can switch from one to the other in a jiffy. Most design drawings give both units. There are some odd things that still come in imperial units such as building materials, but a "2x4" is anything but 2 x 4 inches. Plywood is imperial length, but metric thickness, rounded to the nearest convenient inch fraction. Food still uses imperial units of measure, most of the time, but people just eyeball the quantities and probably don't even know the actual amount. Most people can't look at a container and tell you if it's a pint or a quart. I believe what happened is that the metric system was taught as a bunch of math, and people hate math. The big push came while I was in grade school, and I remember being taught: "The metric system is easy, all you have to do is some math." Metric was math and conversion factors. I remember a machinist telling me: "I hate metric because of the math." Yet he could add fractional inches in his head.
- ghaff 6y ago
  I agree with this but I assume you meant that most people can’t easily distinguish between a liter and a quart.

jacobolus 6y ago

> In 1793, Thomas Jefferson requested artifacts from France that could be used to adopt the metric system in the United States, and Joseph Dombey was sent from France with a standard kilogram. Before reaching the United States, Dombey's ship was blown off course by a storm and captured by pirates, and he died in captivity on Montserrat. More seriously, blame the Reagan administration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_Stat...

capableweb 6y ago
Thanks for that link! Seems to outline that there has been many attempts, some still ongoing, but not making a lot of progress. Seems weird to fault all of these failed attempts to the Reagan administration, but I guess that's also an American thing to do, attribute issues to one group of people, not the one you're in, but "the other group".
- rovr138 6y ago
  > but not making a lot of progress That part reminded me of Puerto Rico. Streets are marked with kilometer markers, rural addresses are street and km and hectometers. Also everyone miles for everything else. I’m actually not sure which conversion failed.
  - rdl 6y ago
    And land is measured in "spanish acres" as well (Cuerda).
    - tomjakubowski 6y ago
      And two different scales of magnitudes (US-style "short scale", and "long scale" from Spanish colonial days), meaning two different meanings for millions and billions! https://metricpioneer.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/long-scale-and-short-scale-how-much-is-a-billion-it-depends-where-you-live/ https://metricpioneer.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/long-scale-an...
      - rovr138 6y ago
        And not a small difference! And people misuse it all the time.
    - rovr138 6y ago
      We have a bit of a mess back home

FoeNyx 6y ago

> I know imperial was invented by the British, but it's largely just the US left using it According to wikipedia, the US do not use the "Imperial System" but the "United States customary units" and they are not exactly equivalent, although they both derive from the "English units ".¹ Also, from the article: "The international foot is exactly 0.3048 of a meter". And it seems the international yard and pound are defined using the SI units as the reference.² (Edit: So by transitivity they also are defined using caesium-133 atom's radiation, light speed in vacuum and Planck constant.) ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_imperial_and_US_customary_measurement_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_imperial_and... ² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_yard_and_pound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_yard_and_pound

masklinn 6y ago
Basically, US Customary is english units pre Imperial standardisation. Then in 1959 the major non-metric countries (I want to say US, UK, SA, AU and NZ?) unified their units under the "International Yards and Pounds". This metrified the definitions of various non-metric units. So for all the units with an "international" version, "US customary" and "imperial" are now the same thing (though the pre-international versions might still be used in some contexts e.g. US surveyor units are, in fact, pre-international US customary units), and there are units which were not unified, most notably units of volume which remain different in the US and in imperial dominions.

Theodores 6y ago

Customary Units and Imperial measurements are bad, we all know that. However, play Devils Advocate for a moment to see the benefits of these allegedly backwards measurements. Take the foot. This is twelve inches. You can divide a foot into thirds or sixths without any recurring numbers. This is of practical application. If you are working with some DIY task and everything is in Imperial measurements then it all works out as easy as Lego pieces.

ithkuil 6y ago
Yeah, duodecimal systems (base 12) rock! But is the customary units system consistently duodecimal? Iirc it's not, but I might misremember.
- jabl 6y ago
  No. E.g. a foot is 12 inches, but a yard is 3 feet.
  - masklinn 6y ago
    And a chain is 22 yards and a furlong is 10 chains and a mile is 8 furlong (which is why a mile is 1760 or 5280 feet.
- saalweachter 6y ago
  It's mostly binary -- 16 ounces in a pound, 16 drams in an ounce, 8 pints in a gallon, 8 furlongs in a mile, 4 rods in a chain. Then you've got a few odd ones, like 10 chains in a furlong or 22 yards in a chain or 3 feet in a yard. In general, the secret to happiness in customary units is to only ever work in a single unit and never convert between them. If you are working in construction, you probably only ever want to deal in inches. Ceilings are 96 or 120 inches tall, doors are 32 or 36 inches wide, etc etc etc. The moment you start using two units at once you are going to have a bad time, so if you pay attention people tend to only use one, even if it confuses people who don't know why doors are 80 inches high instead of 6 feet 8 inches.
- ithkuil 6y ago

Evidlo 6y ago

I have tools which are almost all customary units. Sockets, Allen wrenches, calipers, wrenches, drill bits, taps/dies. All customary. Its just what's available used here.

chrisseaton 6y ago
Can't you convert the measurement from customary to metric, or from metric to customary? Why does it matter what system the tool was designed for? Obviously anything that can be measured in customary can also be measured in metric.
- SiempreViernes 6y ago
  The exact sizes are all arbitrary, in practice the are all in even fractions of some base unit: imperial an metric tools simply fit together poorly because they’ve been made in slightly different sizes
- s_tec 6y ago
  The US uses different bolt threads than the rest of the world. Just today I had to buy an 1/4 inch long 8-32 threaded screw to fix our stroller. The 8 refers to a standard diameter in the US system, and the 32 means "32 threads per inch".
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    How does this work now that almost all products are global and most are manufactured outside the US? Does a Ford engine get designed in both customary for in the US and in metric for the rest of the world?
    - toast0 6y ago
      At this point, new cars are 100% metric, with the exception of tire sizes, which are still inches (usually integer inches, sometimes half inches too), and have been for a pretty long time (switching seems to have started in the late 80s / early 90s where cars would have both types of fasteners, and by the end of the 90s, it was just metric). This probably has something to do with the increasingly global supply chains, and increasingly global parts suppliers. Oh, and the speedometer and the odometer. The digital ones are probably counting meters and converting though.

iNerdier 6y ago

It’s even more confusing than that. They use the British system prior to imperial standardisation, so one has both US customary and imperial units of inch etc measurements. Which is why volumes and amount of sub units are different between the two.

noneeeed 6y ago
It gets particularly confusing when people start comparing mpg for US and British cars, as the two gallons are not the same, I've seen so many arguments online where people are flat out comparing differenteasures and assuming they were the same.
- masklinn 6y ago
  > It gets particularly confusing when people start comparing mpg for US and British cars, as the two gallons are not the same TBF mpg is a terrible unit to compare car efficiency regardless of which gallon you use. It's only more convenient to evaluate the range you have on a tank.
  - noneeeed 6y ago
    I'm obviously missing something. Why would distance travelled on a unit of fuel be a bad way to measure the efficiency of a car? I know that such measures are always imprecise due to different driving styles/conditions etc. So what is a better way to measure the efficiency of a car?
    - masklinn 6y ago
      > I'm obviously missing something. Why would distance travelled on a unit of fuel be a bad way to measure the efficiency of a car? Because it has a sublinear relationship to absolute efficiency: an 11mpg car is significantly more efficient than a 10mpg car, while a 41mpg car much less so in relation to a 40mpg car: both provide an extra mile per gallon, which translates into a 10% and 2.5% increase in efficiency respectively. > So what is a better way to measure the efficiency of a car? gpm (aka L/100km which is what's used in most metric countries). It's less convenient when you know how much fuel you have and want to know what distance you can expect, but it's way more convenient to compare efficiencies, as well as to calculate how much fuel you'll need for a given trip: the examples above are 21.4L/100, 23.5L/100, 5.7 L/100km and 5.9 L/100km. From this, it's obvious that the absolute gain in efficiency is much greater going from 10 to 11 (2L/100km economy) than from 40 to 41 (0.2L/100km)

0BADAC1D 6y ago

a machinist told me that when he had to start doing metric stuff it was all the same dimensions, but converted to metric. so instead of 1/64" he had to mill 0.396875mm. even if everything new designed was in metric with fairly round numbers, you still have a ton of existing stuff designed with imperial units that needs to be taken into account and designed around. the result in some cases is that you get none of the benefits from metric or imperial. and your machinist needs to buy new equipment. the main thing metric has going for it is that it's the same radix as our counting system and is consistant (as opposed to base12 and then base5280).

corty 6y ago
There are a few more advantages, especially when machining. There is a large system of standardized metric parts, e.g. washers, screws, etc. available on the cheap because they are needed everywhere. Whereas the US mess of screw sizes, denominations and threads produces a nonending headache of unavailability, high price and non-fitting but similar-looking parts. Yes, the changeover will be ugly and involve redoing all your plans at some point. But after that you will see how much you are missing out...
- 0BADAC1D 6y ago
  there's a bicycle suspension company that's all-metric except for a single screw to adjust tension. apparently the metric screws had too steep of threads and didnt allow for the level of fine adjustment they wanted. clearly we should create another standard to encompass all these cases and alleviate confusion.
  - corty 6y ago
    There is a standard for metric threads with a finer inclination/pitch, no need to create anything special for the purpose: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_metric_screw_thread https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_metric_screw_thread
alkonaut 6y ago
> the main thing metric has going for it is that it's the same radix I think this is the thing that is usually lost. Metric isn't about the units. No one cares whether the length unit is the size of a finger or a foot. What's important is the radix, ease of conversion conversion and relation between the units of different dimension. A swimming pool can be 10m long and 5m and 2m deep. That means its volume is 100m^3 or 100 thousand liters and the mass of the water is a hundred tons. There are 3 coke cans in a liter (or kilo) so the pool could room 300k coke cans. Quick in-your-head conversions like that are so difficult in some cases with pounds, gallons, fl.ounces etc.

lisper 6y ago

It's political, just like wearing masks to prevent covid infection has become politicized. Both masks and meters have become associated with left-wing intellectual elites, and so the right reflexively rebels against them. EDIT: to all the people downvoting this comment without explaining why: you are actually proving my point.

new2628 6y ago
You forgot the step where left-wing intellectual elites ridiculed people for wearing masks as it "doesn't protect anyway and creates a false sense of security". If anything, I would imagine masks to be a prepper thing, so I would have thought more popular on the right, but I guess there is no logic anymore.
- lisper 6y ago
  Masks don't protect the person who wears them, they protect the people around the people who wear them, so they only work if everyone wears them. In the early days of the pandemic there weren't enough masks for the general public (because the Trump administration had sent a significant portion of the U.S. supply to China [1]) so there was a desire to reserve the limited remaining supply for health care workers. Comments like yours which obfuscate basic facts like this are a perfect example of the kind of politicization I'm talking about. [1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/us-tons-ppe-china/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/us-tons-ppe-china/
  - naasking 6y ago
    Of course masks protect people who wear them. Perhaps the protection is "minimal", but that's not zero.
    - lisper 6y ago
      Oh, good grief. So I left out the word "mainly". That in no way refutes my point, which is that this entire discussion has been politicized. And the fact that you are picking at such a tiny nit just further proves my point.

currymj 6y ago

in the US, at this point, advocating for metrification is associated with a sort of odd, fringe type of political figure. See the recent presidental campaign of Lincoln Chafee. Or the very humorous "Stonecutters' Song" from the Simpsons (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoSLiHKrzRU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoSLiHKrzRU), in which a parody of the Freemasons confesses to covering up UFOs, sabotaging electric cars, and suppressing the metric system.

ghaff 6y ago
And whatever some people on forums like this may think about it, there is zero widespread interest in a wholesale switch to metric in the US. Where there's an advantage to using metric like in science and engineering, people use metric (mostly). For day to day life, they mostly use US units and they work fine. As someone else noted, even if you look at the UK, they use the metric system more than the US does, but they also still use imperial units in a lot of contexts--including some we don't use in the US like stones.
throw0101a 6y ago
> in the US, at this point, advocating for metrification is associated with a sort of odd, fringe type of political figure. Tucker Carlson of Fox News thinks that metric system is a form of tyranny: > CARLSON: Almost every nation on Earth has fallen under the yoke of tyranny -- the metric system -- from Beijing to Buenos Aires from Lusaka to London, the people the world have been forced to measure their environment in millimeters and kilograms. * https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/can-the-us-continue-to-stand-alone-against-the-metric-system https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/can-the-us-continue-to-st... Nothing new, with things going back to 1977: > Dean Krakel thinks metric is more about Marxism than measurement. As director of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma, Krakel is waging a war against metric on political grounds. In this 1977 clip from As It Happens, he says it reflects "the philosophical way communists want one of everything" - one world, one monetary system, one educational system and, now, one measurement system. "We're Americans, we're different. We're individualistic, we're strong," he says with passion. * https://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/is-the-metric-system-a-communist-plot https://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/is-the-metric-system-a-com...

vikramkr 6y ago

Everything is already made to imperial, people are already comfortable using imperial. And the US is in an international position of strength in that we arent manufacturing amd selling things to other countries, we are buying goods made elsewhere, so we're the ones generating the demand. We dont need to standardize with the rest of the world in the same way, and so we dont bother with the effort. In the areas where standardization is required, such as research and development, you'll see that scientists already use metric. The US actually originally planned to use metric, but if I recall correctly, the guy thomas Jefferson had invited to bring metric standards to the US ended up getting captured by pirates, so we never had the standards needed to switch and just didnt bother. But he time metrification was sweeping the globe, we'd already industrialized. And one advantage that imperial has over metric - there are more multiples of 12. 12 is more divisible. A third of a foot is 4 inches, while a third of a meter is 33.333333333333333 etc centimeters

kergonath 6y ago
I never get this point. Why does it matter that 100 is not divisible by 3? What makes a third of a metre so special compared to 3 tenths? Most things do not want to fit neatly on integers on one scale, you need decimal points anyway. In general contexts, either 30, 33, or 35 cm are perfectly acceptable. When accuracy is required, we use millimetres anyway (or micrometres, or nanometres, or angstroms...). I really don’t see how more integers factors is an advantage that outweighs the clusterfuck that are conversion factors between points, inches, feet, miles, and the other stupid units, or the fact that a nautical mile is not a mile. Besides, there’s absolutely nothing stopping anyone from using “a third of a metre” as a unit. For example, it’s common to have a line for 1/3 l in measuring cups.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Divisibility. Using base-ten units, you can divide precisely by only 2 and 5. Not only are 1/3 and 2/3 not integer subdivisions of ten, they're not even precise decimals, but asre repeating. Under base 12, there are precise subdivisions of 2, 3, 4, and 6 units. Under base 30 you can evenly divide by these as well as 10 and 15. Under base 60 (a commonly used measurement base, a usage example will come to you in time), subdivisions are the above, plus 12, 20, and 30. For practical use and arrangement, these can be highly useful capabilities. In angular measure (base 360, 60*4), there are divisions which relate to trigonometric functions but not decimal scales. And to truly transcent the rational there are radian measures based on pi. Under metric, you can still come up with precise divisibility, but only by disposing of the base-ten rationality. E.g., using 60cm or 60kg as a division basis. Ultimately, base ten is an arbitrary anatomical accident.

analog31 6y ago

It has ceased to matter. Most new products sold in the US use metric fasteners. A typical family has little or no use for imperial tools. There are some weird hold-out standards such as spark plug wrenches, but those have only one use anyway. The imperial units are all defined in terms of metric units. There's no standard inch sitting in a vault somewhere. Machine tools can switch from one to the other in a jiffy. Most design drawings give both units. There are some odd things that still come in imperial units such as building materials, but a "2x4" is anything but 2 x 4 inches. Plywood is imperial length, but metric thickness, rounded to the nearest convenient inch fraction. Food still uses imperial units of measure, most of the time, but people just eyeball the quantities and probably don't even know the actual amount. Most people can't look at a container and tell you if it's a pint or a quart. I believe what happened is that the metric system was taught as a bunch of math, and people hate math. The big push came while I was in grade school, and I remember being taught: "The metric system is easy, all you have to do is some math." Metric was math and conversion factors. I remember a machinist telling me: "I hate metric because of the math." Yet he could add fractional inches in his head.

ghaff 6y ago
I agree with this but I assume you meant that most people can’t easily distinguish between a liter and a quart.