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> Sheep were weighed in kgs. People were weighed in stones. Feed in pounds. The reason you can get away with this for so long is because you -- historically, e

> Sheep were weighed in kgs. People were weighed in stones. Feed in pounds. The reason you can get away with this for so long is because you -- historically, especially -- almost never need to convert between "mass of feed" and "mass of sheep" and "mass of people". Even for the most common case where it would matter (transporting each of the above) it almost doesn't, because you typically use different vehicles for each purpose. This means most people who deal with non-metric units almost never run into the friction of mixed units -- if you're doing carpentry, for instance, everything is inches, from lumber to doors to room dimensions, so you almost never actually have to deal with multiplying or dividing by 12 to convert to feet. Likewise with there being 5280 feet in a mile. Sure, if you actually have to convert from feet to miles, it's a pain and a potential source of error. But why the heck are you converting from feet to miles? Pick whichever unit makes sense for the task and hand and stick with it.

kstrauser 6y ago
Those are really good points, except maybe converting between masses. At some point or another you have to transport stuff. If you send a wagon with 3 tons of feed on it to a farm, how many sheep can you send back to town for sale? That goes double if a ship or boat is involved.
- saalweachter 6y ago
  Well firstly, your sheep are walking to town. Secondly, the answer is: a wagon-full. Sheep are not particularly more dense than grain. You are not going to be able to cram a higher mass of sheep in a wagon than you can cram grain; the exact number you could transport in a particular wagon will be determined more by geometry than mass. This does tend towards a common mass-unit for anything that is shipped by mass; in archaic American/English units this is typically the hundredweight and ton, depending on whether you are shipping a little or a lot. A more likely example would be shipping grain or coke one way and shipping iron stock back; you might transport 15 hundredweight each way, although more likely you'd be light one way or the other.
  - dalbasal 6y ago
    > Well firstly, your sheep are walking to town He had a trailer. I'm not that old. :) I'm not aware of any sheep transporting that involved precise weights. AFAIK, he never mailed sheep. In any case... we could convert between weights when necessary.

kstrauser 6y ago

Those are really good points, except maybe converting between masses. At some point or another you have to transport stuff. If you send a wagon with 3 tons of feed on it to a farm, how many sheep can you send back to town for sale? That goes double if a ship or boat is involved.

saalweachter 6y ago
Well firstly, your sheep are walking to town. Secondly, the answer is: a wagon-full. Sheep are not particularly more dense than grain. You are not going to be able to cram a higher mass of sheep in a wagon than you can cram grain; the exact number you could transport in a particular wagon will be determined more by geometry than mass. This does tend towards a common mass-unit for anything that is shipped by mass; in archaic American/English units this is typically the hundredweight and ton, depending on whether you are shipping a little or a lot. A more likely example would be shipping grain or coke one way and shipping iron stock back; you might transport 15 hundredweight each way, although more likely you'd be light one way or the other.
- dalbasal 6y ago
  > Well firstly, your sheep are walking to town He had a trailer. I'm not that old. :) I'm not aware of any sheep transporting that involved precise weights. AFAIK, he never mailed sheep. In any case... we could convert between weights when necessary.