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Purely political. There were plans in place in the 70s and 80s. A particular political party politicised it as some sort of government overreach/UN/NWO meddling
by yardie 4y ago
Purely political. There were plans in place in the 70s and 80s. A particular political party politicised it as some sort of government overreach/UN/NWO meddling. And once they had the votes they voted to strip any mention of metric in federal usage. States followed shortly.
I learned both metric and imperial measurements in elementary, middle, and high school. From what I understand they only use metric in science classes now.
It didn’t make sense to me at the time. But the. I saw what happened to Core Curriculum, CRT, and US history. And it all makes a lot more sense.
- throwaway894345 4y agoIt's not "purely political" in any meaningful sense. It's just hard to transition something 330 million people use on a daily basis and the benefit is close to negligible. It's certainly among the least of any American's problems. Yeah, we have to have a set of metric sockets and a set of imperial sockets, but life goes on. Why doesn't the entire world standardize on language? That would provide far more benefit than standardizing on trivially-convertible units of measurement.
- nicoburns 4y ago> It's just hard to transition something 330 million people use on a daily basis and the benefit is close to negligible I agree that it's hard, but not the benefit is negligible. The cost of not switching is paid every time an american company needs to work with a company from elsewhere in the world.
- spoiler 4y agoAlso, I feel like the linear nature (and being base 10) makes metric system easier to learn and have an intuition about. Although, another comment here said they find the metric system unintuitive for medium (which I assume are everyday) values. So, maybe I'm just biased on that belief
- eternalban 4y agoThe imperial system (or any adhoc system developed over the centuries) corresponds to the scales of human body and condition. Le Corbusier attempted a synthesis of a rational (mathematical) system that scaled appropriately. He used the Golden Ratio as the scaling mechanism. The very fact of that attempt carries an implicit critique of using the metric system for human centric design. https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51hAE7WuQZL._AC_SY1000_.jpg https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51hAE7WuQZL._AC_SY1000_....
- Aromasin 4y agoI will forever hold it against Boeing for using imperial in their engineering drawings, when almost every other aerospace company in the world uses metric. I cannot tell you how many hundreds of man hours I've seen spent by engineers and technicians, remaking designs and rebuilding prototypes to the correct dimensions. We once had something shipped to us on a pallet instead of the expected box, because the factory built a wiring harness to inches not centimeters.
- throwaway894345 4y agoThis seems like a negligible cost. In my experience, both companies stick to a common system of measurement (almost always metric) and go on with life as normal. It’s not like both companies maintain distinct engineering plans for their native measurement system and have to manually sync updates from each side, and almost any American company that regularly deals with International suppliers is already using metric domestically (e.g., anything in the automotive, construction, agriculture, forestry, etc equipment industries as well as anything in the electronics space, the energy industries, and so on).
- sbaiddn 4y ago100% political and nothing to do with the trillions of dollars required to transition what was at the time half the world's industrial base. And for what? The imperial system is defined exactly in metric already as 254mm == 1 inch and has been de facto for 100 years.
- anticensor 4y agoThat inch is one order of magnitude off. It is actually 25.4mm == 1in