5 ms·

America Has Two Feet. It’s About to Lose One of Them

49 points by sohkamyung 6y ago

gpvos 6y ago
I'm mostly surprised that the standardization of the American measurements and the development of the metric system happened nearly at the same time. A few years could have meant a huge difference regarding the American adoption of the metric system.
Yaa101 6y ago
It should lose both, saves them from stupid conversion mistakes...
- orthoxerox 6y ago
  Beaten me to it. But I guess conversions to millimetres will now at least be straightforward. 304.8mm per foot.
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    Better one inch is 2.54 cm.
- tasogare 6y ago
  And also using a rational date format (yyyy/MM/dd or dd/MM/yyyy) would be nice.
  - ericmay 6y ago
    We do mm/dd/yyyy because that's how we say it. In Europe if you ask someone the date do they say 2020, August, 18th? or 18th, August, 2020? Stuff like this really isn't a big deal. I don't get why people get so hung up on it.
    - electricviolet 6y ago
      In many (most?) European languages the day is spoken before the month. e.g. le dix-huit août, deux mille vingt
    - vereis 6y ago
      In the UK we say 18th of August, 2020
    - chownie 6y ago
      Except for cases like the 4th of July, in which case it's suddenly DD/MM again. Much like the UK's relationship with metric/imperial, the problem with US dating is that it's not consistent. In the UK we'd say "18th [of] August, 2020"
      - ericmay 6y ago
        Because when we say "4th of July" it's not being said in the context of a date, it's an event. It's used in the same context that Christmas or Thanksgiving would be used. You don't say that we're inconsistent because we call Christmas "Christmas" instead of December 25th. We also call the 4th of July Independence Day. It's just colloquial usage. If you ask someone what date Independence Day is they'll say July 4th, 1776. Not 4th of July, 1776. Test it. > In the UK we'd say "18th [of] August, 2020" Cool. In the US we say August 18th, 2020. So that's why we do MM/DD/YYYY. If you have any American colleagues or friends you can text this by asking them what the date is. They'll say August 18th (maybe with the 2020 part depending on how specific they want to be). I really don't understand why people are so hell bent on changing our culture. We do it this way and like it. It's not a big deal.
        spacedcowboy 6y ago
        I just asked 4 people “what date Independence day is”, got 3 weird looks and 4 answers of “4th July”, no year specified. Non-US people don’t like it because it’s (a) different, and (b) illogical. If it were different and logical (ie: the numbers were in some hierarchical sequence), there’d be a lot less criticism of it, IMHO.
  - stolenmerch 6y ago
    yyyy/MM/dd or dd/MM/yyyy are not more rational, they are just a different convention. There is nothing inherent to those structures that convey the order of month and day.
Lammy 6y ago
This article was way more interesting than the headline makes it seem. It's about the 1893 vs 1959 definitions of a unit of distance.
hyperman1 6y ago
Pretty interesting article. What stood out for me was why the US didn't standardize to metric: They standardized the whole country on something because they had to - too much people from different places came together, each with their own measurement system. The rest of the world standardized later. I assume the overhead from conversion only became unbearable when some level of commerce between different nations was reached. When they standardized, they had better science available. So now there are 2 landmasses, each big and integrated enough to have internal units, not feel too much pain from using a different kind of units. Everything goes reasonably well, unless they meet.
- spicymaki 6y ago
  I do feel pain anytime a NASA spacecraft explodes or I need to find and need to replace a screw and wonder which unit it is in.
SandunGunn 6y ago
https://archive.is/sIrFG https://archive.is/sIrFG
vr46 6y ago
Opportunity to switch to metric lost? While I think it’s a bit dumb to not standardize, I grew up in the UK with gallons of petrol, quarters of sweets, weighed myself in stones and drank pints of beer. And none of those things are relative to each other in my head and don’t need to be standardized. They’re units of communication that work for us because we all have a common language and a context, so it’s fine. When they’re units of measurement, everything goes sideways. I’ve just about gotten to grips with fuel expressed in litres. I suspect it was only changed to make the unit price look cheaper from a distance.

49 points by sohkamyung 6y ago

I'm mostly surprised that the standardization of the American measurements and the development of the metric system happened nearly at the same time. A few years could have meant a huge difference regarding the American adoption of the metric system.

Yaa101 6y ago

It should lose both, saves them from stupid conversion mistakes...

orthoxerox 6y ago
Beaten me to it. But I guess conversions to millimetres will now at least be straightforward. 304.8mm per foot.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  Better one inch is 2.54 cm.
tasogare 6y ago
And also using a rational date format (yyyy/MM/dd or dd/MM/yyyy) would be nice.
- ericmay 6y ago
  We do mm/dd/yyyy because that's how we say it. In Europe if you ask someone the date do they say 2020, August, 18th? or 18th, August, 2020? Stuff like this really isn't a big deal. I don't get why people get so hung up on it.
  - electricviolet 6y ago
    In many (most?) European languages the day is spoken before the month. e.g. le dix-huit août, deux mille vingt
  - vereis 6y ago
    In the UK we say 18th of August, 2020
  - chownie 6y ago
    Except for cases like the 4th of July, in which case it's suddenly DD/MM again. Much like the UK's relationship with metric/imperial, the problem with US dating is that it's not consistent. In the UK we'd say "18th [of] August, 2020"
    - ericmay 6y ago
      Because when we say "4th of July" it's not being said in the context of a date, it's an event. It's used in the same context that Christmas or Thanksgiving would be used. You don't say that we're inconsistent because we call Christmas "Christmas" instead of December 25th. We also call the 4th of July Independence Day. It's just colloquial usage. If you ask someone what date Independence Day is they'll say July 4th, 1776. Not 4th of July, 1776. Test it. > In the UK we'd say "18th [of] August, 2020" Cool. In the US we say August 18th, 2020. So that's why we do MM/DD/YYYY. If you have any American colleagues or friends you can text this by asking them what the date is. They'll say August 18th (maybe with the 2020 part depending on how specific they want to be). I really don't understand why people are so hell bent on changing our culture. We do it this way and like it. It's not a big deal.
      - spacedcowboy 6y ago
        I just asked 4 people “what date Independence day is”, got 3 weird looks and 4 answers of “4th July”, no year specified. Non-US people don’t like it because it’s (a) different, and (b) illogical. If it were different and logical (ie: the numbers were in some hierarchical sequence), there’d be a lot less criticism of it, IMHO.
- stolenmerch 6y ago
  yyyy/MM/dd or dd/MM/yyyy are not more rational, they are just a different convention. There is nothing inherent to those structures that convey the order of month and day.

Lammy 6y ago

This article was way more interesting than the headline makes it seem. It's about the 1893 vs 1959 definitions of a unit of distance.

hyperman1 6y ago

Pretty interesting article. What stood out for me was why the US didn't standardize to metric: They standardized the whole country on something because they had to - too much people from different places came together, each with their own measurement system. The rest of the world standardized later. I assume the overhead from conversion only became unbearable when some level of commerce between different nations was reached. When they standardized, they had better science available. So now there are 2 landmasses, each big and integrated enough to have internal units, not feel too much pain from using a different kind of units. Everything goes reasonably well, unless they meet.

spicymaki 6y ago
I do feel pain anytime a NASA spacecraft explodes or I need to find and need to replace a screw and wonder which unit it is in.

SandunGunn 6y ago

https://archive.is/sIrFG https://archive.is/sIrFG

vr46 6y ago

Opportunity to switch to metric lost? While I think it’s a bit dumb to not standardize, I grew up in the UK with gallons of petrol, quarters of sweets, weighed myself in stones and drank pints of beer. And none of those things are relative to each other in my head and don’t need to be standardized. They’re units of communication that work for us because we all have a common language and a context, so it’s fine. When they’re units of measurement, everything goes sideways. I’ve just about gotten to grips with fuel expressed in litres. I suspect it was only changed to make the unit price look cheaper from a distance.