6 ms·

The US Plans to Finally Standardize the Length of a Single Foot

45 points by asjo 5y ago

transfire 5y ago
It is kind of annoying. In my job we have to use both all the time. Schematics will sometimes use both in a single drawing! Metric may not be ideal -- I appreciate the English system for it's ease of halving, but it still would be better if there was a single standard.
- Agingcoder 5y ago
  Why is it easier to halve with the imperial(I assume that's what you mean by 'English') system? Could you give an example?
  - leetcrew 5y ago
    imperial distance units are related by 12. 12 inches in a foot. 12 (* 440) feet in a mile. 12 has more integer divisors than 10, so it is more likely that you end up with whole units when you apply simple ratios. it's not a big advantage in the age of digital calculators, but it arguably makes day-to-day calculations easier. but to answer your question, I don't think imperial distance units have an advantage with halving. 1 m / 2 = 50 cm, and 50 cm / 2 = 25 cm. no less straightforward than 1 ft / 2 = 6 in, and 6 in / 2 = 3 in. either way we can't go further without creating a fraction. imperial distance has a clear advantage with thirds. 1 ft / 3 = 4 in, but 1 m / 3 is unrepresentable as a decimal number. of course none of this applies to imperial volume units which are related by various powers of two. these are much easier to halve, but do not have the advantage with thirds.
  - zhhsg 5y ago
    Leetcrew is right, but the advantage is greater. Inches are typically divided in powers of two. So you don’t have to represent the 5 digitally when dividing (which you can’t in the binary system). So, if the basic unit you’re designing with is inches, you can scale up easily and add a 3 with the base 12. Or divide using only 2 which helps the computer out
- ezequiel-garzon 5y ago
  But halving is made easier because people say things like “3/8 of an inch”, no? If that’s all, nothing prevents you from using expressions like “3/8 of a cm”. If, on the other hand, 2 (or say 4) inches equaled 1 foot, 2 feet 1 yard, etc...
  - chiph 5y ago
    > nothing prevents you from using expressions like “3/8 of a cm”. I'm going to use that with one of my European colleagues. And watch their eyes cross as they try to make sense of it.
- ur-whale 5y ago
  It's all nice and swell (you can also cut in 3 fairly easily with imperial) until someone has to calculate the volume of a swimming pool given it's three dimensions (or launch a non-exploding space shuttle).
- xwolfi 5y ago
  Yeah well in the rest of the non english world we also have to fight with multiple charsets for simple things such as excel exports and you have no idea the amount of time and money this just cost. I think it s better than 200 years ago for sure, but we need to continue merging all standards or we suffer for nothing forever.
icegreentea2 5y ago
Straight from the source itself: https://www.nist.gov/pml/us-surveyfoot https://www.nist.gov/pml/us-surveyfoot To be clear, the 'foot' used in day to day use has already been standardized to the international foot. It's only in surveying where there's weirdness, and that's what this is resolving in.
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
I wonder which country of the mighty triumvirate of USA, Liberia and Myanmar would be the first to leave this club.
- peteretep 5y ago
  Plenty of other countries still use “foot” as a measurement. Try asking a Canadian or Brit how tall they are in cm
  - thitcanh 5y ago
    I'm 23 buckets tall and half a periwinkle.
    - goodluckchuck 5y ago
      You might as well say you’re 2 .12 meters. They’re all made up. It’s just that some are helpful, and you are not.
  - philistine 5y ago
    Canadians still use the imperial system personally but the country is metricized. We’re just stuck with paper and wood in inches because we’re next to the US.
    - vinay427 5y ago
      There are a lot more similarly arbitrary things than just paper and wood which are measured in imperials in Canada. I'm reminded of this (comical) guide I first saw posted on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/e1hx4f/how_to_choose_measuring_units_in_canada/ https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/e1hx4f/how_to_c...
    - dalbasal 5y ago
      It's on the way out, but in Ireland people are colloquially weighed in stones, sheep in kgs and feed in lbs. For a while, speed and distance weren't compatible. Metric money was a similar issue in the 60s. People still thought in shillings for decades. I read that historically (especially in Britain) entirely different counting systems were used simultaneously. Shepherds had their sheep counting numbers, sailors had a different one. Dialects ran deep, not long ago. Incidentally, it's lucky that metric never became known as "The French System."
ddevault 5y ago
Specifically, my left foot. It's more annoying than you'd think: I've had people in and out of my apartment with rulers for weeks, and taking my shoes on and off all the time is a hassle. I finally sent them all packing when someone showed up with a hand saw and an anesthesiologist.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Lev1a 5y ago
Why don't they just go to the logical next step and just make metric the standard, the Imperial System (foot etc.) are already defined by the Metric system? Humorous view on the situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hid7EJkwDNk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hid7EJkwDNk
- ysavir 5y ago
  While I agree that Metric is better, converting isn't very practical. Imagine the cost of having to change every sign, book, and other text using imperial measurements, as well as any programs and tools that are based on imperial. It just wouldn't happen. We could pass a law saying "we're metric now", but it would likely just be a formality while we continue using Imperial.
  - tokamak-teapot 5y ago
    You don’t have to change everything all at once. Make new things use both. Then later make new things use metric only. Maybe. In the UK milk comes in multiples of a pint but with millilitres shown on the packaging too.
    - emodendroket 5y ago
      So do American products.
      - galangalalgol 5y ago
        Except soda and liquor which are in liters.
  - ulfw 5y ago
    Things that are all possible and payable in every country on the planet, poor or rich, except the US of A
- dazhengca 5y ago
  Metric is currently the “ preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce” https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml;jsessionid=8314B6B7A95CC66743496CA05FED62D5?hl=false&edition=prelim&req=granuleid%3AUSC-prelim-title15-section205b&num=0&saved=%7CZ3JhbnVsZWlkOlVTQy1wcmVsaW0tdGl0bGUxNS1zZWN0aW9uMjA1YQ%3D%3D%7C%7C%7C0%7Cfalse%7Cprelim https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml;jsessionid=8314B6B7A95CC... As you mentioned, the foot and all other U.S. customary units are based on the International System of Units (SI). https://www.nist.gov/pml/weights-and-measures/metric-si https://www.nist.gov/pml/weights-and-measures/metric-si
choonway 5y ago
why not combine the both and adopt the metric inch?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- zhhsg 5y ago
  Because the inch is already metric. Has been for 100 years. 1 in == 25.4 mm Therefore US customary units, while not being SI, are just as metric units as the calorie (energy to raise one (metric) gram of water one (metric) degre C. Switching to metric doesn’t have too many advantages - learn the bloody definitions - but has trillions of dollars of disadvantages (think the capital in machining tools. Now add the cost of training the old guys to metric) In fact the imperial system has some advantages over metric: the measures are often divided by powers of 2, meaning they can be better represented in binary. Also, there are some very fun quirks with the imperial system that I love: 1 in == 2.54 cm = 2^8 /100 cm. Very useful if you need to convert from a 64th of an inch. 1 mi ~ phi km. Also very cool. And then all the history behind those beautiful, since forgotten, customary units. [im a European-Canadian who moved to the US as an adult; trained on metric my whole life]
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    When I was in school, the inch was 2.54005 cm. And I am somewhat less than 100 years old. When was the inch defined as 2.54 cm? It was within my lifetime, but I don't recall the year. [Edit: Looks like 1959, which is slightly before my time. It takes a bit for textbooks to catch up...]
    - dnsisgsj 5y ago
      It’s actually earlier than that, it took standard committees decades to catch up to industry. The 2.54 cm inch was effectively imposed by Johansson’s gauge blocs back in 1912. The Brits accepted it as the standard in 1930, the American Standards Assoc. in 1933. The 1950s date you cite is when government finally caught up. Edit: (Gauge blocks are super cool, btw)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lazulicurio 5y ago
New plan: 1in = 2.5cm 1ft = 3dm 1yd = 9dm 1mi = 16092dm I'm not sure whether it would be more or less likely than eliminating imperial units entirely :/ (edit: This wasn't entirely snark. For reference: the circumference of the earth is ~24901mi. With the new measure it would be ~24903mi, which isn't too shabby)
PedroBatista 5y ago
This is like polishing a turd and put it on display.
jcranmer 5y ago
For clarity (since the article doesn't make it clear), there are two "standard" definitions of the units. Is the inch exactly 2.54 cm [the standard international foot], or is the yard exactly 39.37 cm [the US survey foot]? These two definitions are off by 2ppm. For all intents and purposes, they are the same. If you measured the distance between San Francisco and New York City, the error in measurement between these two definitions would be between 8 and 9 meters.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tzs 5y ago
  > Is the inch exactly 2.54 cm [the standard international foot], or is the yard exactly 39.37 cm [the US survey foot]? Wait...if a yard is 39.37 cm than a foot is 12 1/3 cm, which would make an inch 1 1/36 cm. That's off from 2.54 cm by way more than 2 ppm! A yard would be exactly 91.44 cm if the inch is 2.54 cm, and something very very close to that if it is 2 ppm from the "inch is 2.54 cm" yard. Did you copy/paste the wrong thing? A survey foot is 1200/3937 meters (making a yard ~91.44018288 cm), so 3937 would probably be floating around somewhere on any page talking about this.
  - jcranmer 5y ago
    You're right--it should have been a meter is exactly 39.37 inches.
harryf 5y ago
Might I recommend they standardize on 39.3701 inches ?
wolfretcrap 5y ago
I've always understood 1 foot = 12inches = 25*12mm = 30cm
Igorvelky 5y ago
they finally budged under pressure from "simple" people, who does not understand how ridiculous imperial system is.
throw0101a 5y ago
Previous stories on HN. "America Has Two Feet. It’s About to Lose One of Them" (21c): * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24196228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24196228 "Ending the Era of the U.S. Survey Foot" (158c): * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22203919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22203919 On the somewhat-related topic of measuring things, interesting book by Simon Winchester called The Perfectionists: > The rise of manufacturing could not have happened without an attention to precision. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in eighteenth-century England, standards of measurement were established, giving way to the development of machine tools—machines that make machines. Eventually, the application of precision tools and methods resulted in the creation and mass production of items from guns and glass to mirrors, lenses, and cameras—and eventually gave way to further breakthroughs, including gene splicing, microchips, and the Hadron Collider. […] > As he introduces the minds and methods that have changed the modern world, Winchester explores fundamental questions. Why is precision important? What are the different tools we use to measure it? Who has invented and perfected it? Has the pursuit of the ultra-precise in so many facets of human life blinded us to other things of equal value, such as an appreciation for the age-old traditions of craftsmanship, art, and high culture? Are we missing something that reflects the world as it is, rather than the world as we think we would wish it to be? And can the precise and the natural co-exist in society? * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35068671-the-perfectionists https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35068671-the-perfectioni...
DoreenMichele 5y ago
This is an issue in GIS and when you get it wrong, you can find your map sticks things in the middle of the street instead of on the sidewalk where they really are.

45 points by asjo 5y ago

It is kind of annoying. In my job we have to use both all the time. Schematics will sometimes use both in a single drawing! Metric may not be ideal -- I appreciate the English system for it's ease of halving, but it still would be better if there was a single standard.

Agingcoder 5y ago
Why is it easier to halve with the imperial(I assume that's what you mean by 'English') system? Could you give an example?
- leetcrew 5y ago
  imperial distance units are related by 12. 12 inches in a foot. 12 (* 440) feet in a mile. 12 has more integer divisors than 10, so it is more likely that you end up with whole units when you apply simple ratios. it's not a big advantage in the age of digital calculators, but it arguably makes day-to-day calculations easier. but to answer your question, I don't think imperial distance units have an advantage with halving. 1 m / 2 = 50 cm, and 50 cm / 2 = 25 cm. no less straightforward than 1 ft / 2 = 6 in, and 6 in / 2 = 3 in. either way we can't go further without creating a fraction. imperial distance has a clear advantage with thirds. 1 ft / 3 = 4 in, but 1 m / 3 is unrepresentable as a decimal number. of course none of this applies to imperial volume units which are related by various powers of two. these are much easier to halve, but do not have the advantage with thirds.
- zhhsg 5y ago
  Leetcrew is right, but the advantage is greater. Inches are typically divided in powers of two. So you don’t have to represent the 5 digitally when dividing (which you can’t in the binary system). So, if the basic unit you’re designing with is inches, you can scale up easily and add a 3 with the base 12. Or divide using only 2 which helps the computer out
ezequiel-garzon 5y ago
But halving is made easier because people say things like “3/8 of an inch”, no? If that’s all, nothing prevents you from using expressions like “3/8 of a cm”. If, on the other hand, 2 (or say 4) inches equaled 1 foot, 2 feet 1 yard, etc...
- chiph 5y ago
  > nothing prevents you from using expressions like “3/8 of a cm”. I'm going to use that with one of my European colleagues. And watch their eyes cross as they try to make sense of it.
ur-whale 5y ago
It's all nice and swell (you can also cut in 3 fairly easily with imperial) until someone has to calculate the volume of a swimming pool given it's three dimensions (or launch a non-exploding space shuttle).
xwolfi 5y ago
Yeah well in the rest of the non english world we also have to fight with multiple charsets for simple things such as excel exports and you have no idea the amount of time and money this just cost. I think it s better than 200 years ago for sure, but we need to continue merging all standards or we suffer for nothing forever.

icegreentea2 5y ago

Straight from the source itself: https://www.nist.gov/pml/us-surveyfoot https://www.nist.gov/pml/us-surveyfoot To be clear, the 'foot' used in day to day use has already been standardized to the international foot. It's only in surveying where there's weirdness, and that's what this is resolving in.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

I wonder which country of the mighty triumvirate of USA, Liberia and Myanmar would be the first to leave this club.

peteretep 5y ago
Plenty of other countries still use “foot” as a measurement. Try asking a Canadian or Brit how tall they are in cm
- thitcanh 5y ago
  I'm 23 buckets tall and half a periwinkle.
  - goodluckchuck 5y ago
    You might as well say you’re 2 .12 meters. They’re all made up. It’s just that some are helpful, and you are not.
- philistine 5y ago
  Canadians still use the imperial system personally but the country is metricized. We’re just stuck with paper and wood in inches because we’re next to the US.
  - vinay427 5y ago
    There are a lot more similarly arbitrary things than just paper and wood which are measured in imperials in Canada. I'm reminded of this (comical) guide I first saw posted on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/e1hx4f/how_to_choose_measuring_units_in_canada/ https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/e1hx4f/how_to_c...
  - dalbasal 5y ago
    It's on the way out, but in Ireland people are colloquially weighed in stones, sheep in kgs and feed in lbs. For a while, speed and distance weren't compatible. Metric money was a similar issue in the 60s. People still thought in shillings for decades. I read that historically (especially in Britain) entirely different counting systems were used simultaneously. Shepherds had their sheep counting numbers, sailors had a different one. Dialects ran deep, not long ago. Incidentally, it's lucky that metric never became known as "The French System."

ddevault 5y ago

Specifically, my left foot. It's more annoying than you'd think: I've had people in and out of my apartment with rulers for weeks, and taking my shoes on and off all the time is a hassle. I finally sent them all packing when someone showed up with a hand saw and an anesthesiologist.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Lev1a 5y ago

Why don't they just go to the logical next step and just make metric the standard, the Imperial System (foot etc.) are already defined by the Metric system? Humorous view on the situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hid7EJkwDNk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hid7EJkwDNk

ysavir 5y ago
While I agree that Metric is better, converting isn't very practical. Imagine the cost of having to change every sign, book, and other text using imperial measurements, as well as any programs and tools that are based on imperial. It just wouldn't happen. We could pass a law saying "we're metric now", but it would likely just be a formality while we continue using Imperial.
- tokamak-teapot 5y ago
  You don’t have to change everything all at once. Make new things use both. Then later make new things use metric only. Maybe. In the UK milk comes in multiples of a pint but with millilitres shown on the packaging too.
  - emodendroket 5y ago
    So do American products.
    - galangalalgol 5y ago
      Except soda and liquor which are in liters.
- ulfw 5y ago
  Things that are all possible and payable in every country on the planet, poor or rich, except the US of A
dazhengca 5y ago
Metric is currently the “ preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce” https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml;jsessionid=8314B6B7A95CC66743496CA05FED62D5?hl=false&edition=prelim&req=granuleid%3AUSC-prelim-title15-section205b&num=0&saved=%7CZ3JhbnVsZWlkOlVTQy1wcmVsaW0tdGl0bGUxNS1zZWN0aW9uMjA1YQ%3D%3D%7C%7C%7C0%7Cfalse%7Cprelim https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml;jsessionid=8314B6B7A95CC... As you mentioned, the foot and all other U.S. customary units are based on the International System of Units (SI). https://www.nist.gov/pml/weights-and-measures/metric-si https://www.nist.gov/pml/weights-and-measures/metric-si

choonway 5y ago

why not combine the both and adopt the metric inch?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
zhhsg 5y ago
Because the inch is already metric. Has been for 100 years. 1 in == 25.4 mm Therefore US customary units, while not being SI, are just as metric units as the calorie (energy to raise one (metric) gram of water one (metric) degre C. Switching to metric doesn’t have too many advantages - learn the bloody definitions - but has trillions of dollars of disadvantages (think the capital in machining tools. Now add the cost of training the old guys to metric) In fact the imperial system has some advantages over metric: the measures are often divided by powers of 2, meaning they can be better represented in binary. Also, there are some very fun quirks with the imperial system that I love: 1 in == 2.54 cm = 2^8 /100 cm. Very useful if you need to convert from a 64th of an inch. 1 mi ~ phi km. Also very cool. And then all the history behind those beautiful, since forgotten, customary units. [im a European-Canadian who moved to the US as an adult; trained on metric my whole life]
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  When I was in school, the inch was 2.54005 cm. And I am somewhat less than 100 years old. When was the inch defined as 2.54 cm? It was within my lifetime, but I don't recall the year. [Edit: Looks like 1959, which is slightly before my time. It takes a bit for textbooks to catch up...]
  - dnsisgsj 5y ago
    It’s actually earlier than that, it took standard committees decades to catch up to industry. The 2.54 cm inch was effectively imposed by Johansson’s gauge blocs back in 1912. The Brits accepted it as the standard in 1930, the American Standards Assoc. in 1933. The 1950s date you cite is when government finally caught up. Edit: (Gauge blocks are super cool, btw)

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

lazulicurio 5y ago

New plan: 1in = 2.5cm 1ft = 3dm 1yd = 9dm 1mi = 16092dm I'm not sure whether it would be more or less likely than eliminating imperial units entirely :/ (edit: This wasn't entirely snark. For reference: the circumference of the earth is ~24901mi. With the new measure it would be ~24903mi, which isn't too shabby)

PedroBatista 5y ago

This is like polishing a turd and put it on display.

jcranmer 5y ago

For clarity (since the article doesn't make it clear), there are two "standard" definitions of the units. Is the inch exactly 2.54 cm [the standard international foot], or is the yard exactly 39.37 cm [the US survey foot]? These two definitions are off by 2ppm. For all intents and purposes, they are the same. If you measured the distance between San Francisco and New York City, the error in measurement between these two definitions would be between 8 and 9 meters.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tzs 5y ago
> Is the inch exactly 2.54 cm [the standard international foot], or is the yard exactly 39.37 cm [the US survey foot]? Wait...if a yard is 39.37 cm than a foot is 12 1/3 cm, which would make an inch 1 1/36 cm. That's off from 2.54 cm by way more than 2 ppm! A yard would be exactly 91.44 cm if the inch is 2.54 cm, and something very very close to that if it is 2 ppm from the "inch is 2.54 cm" yard. Did you copy/paste the wrong thing? A survey foot is 1200/3937 meters (making a yard ~91.44018288 cm), so 3937 would probably be floating around somewhere on any page talking about this.
- jcranmer 5y ago
  You're right--it should have been a meter is exactly 39.37 inches.

harryf 5y ago

Might I recommend they standardize on 39.3701 inches ?

wolfretcrap 5y ago

I've always understood 1 foot = 12inches = 25*12mm = 30cm

Igorvelky 5y ago

they finally budged under pressure from "simple" people, who does not understand how ridiculous imperial system is.

throw0101a 5y ago

Previous stories on HN. "America Has Two Feet. It’s About to Lose One of Them" (21c): * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24196228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24196228 "Ending the Era of the U.S. Survey Foot" (158c): * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22203919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22203919 On the somewhat-related topic of measuring things, interesting book by Simon Winchester called The Perfectionists: > The rise of manufacturing could not have happened without an attention to precision. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in eighteenth-century England, standards of measurement were established, giving way to the development of machine tools—machines that make machines. Eventually, the application of precision tools and methods resulted in the creation and mass production of items from guns and glass to mirrors, lenses, and cameras—and eventually gave way to further breakthroughs, including gene splicing, microchips, and the Hadron Collider. […] > As he introduces the minds and methods that have changed the modern world, Winchester explores fundamental questions. Why is precision important? What are the different tools we use to measure it? Who has invented and perfected it? Has the pursuit of the ultra-precise in so many facets of human life blinded us to other things of equal value, such as an appreciation for the age-old traditions of craftsmanship, art, and high culture? Are we missing something that reflects the world as it is, rather than the world as we think we would wish it to be? And can the precise and the natural co-exist in society? * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35068671-the-perfectionists https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35068671-the-perfectioni...

DoreenMichele 5y ago

This is an issue in GIS and when you get it wrong, you can find your map sticks things in the middle of the street instead of on the sidewalk where they really are.