19 ms·

Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

• dmoo 14y ago
  Ireland has converted mostly to the metric system, we switched to kilometers for speed limits in 2005. To be honest you get used to it pretty quickly. There are a number of items, particularly those that are traded with our neighbours in the UK that are shown as both metric and imperial. You still get a pint of Guinness in the pub but all bottles and cans of beer are in metric. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Ireland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Ireland
  • deleted 14y ago
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• stdbrouw 14y ago
  I moved from Belgium to the US last year, and one of the things that surprised me was that metric measures actually see a fair amount of use in the States. It makes a convoluted system even more weird, but it's also just plain fascinating. 2L bottles of coke and 9mm bullets, miles except when people suddenly switch to kilometers, 50 meter pools and 5K jogging runs but a 120 yard football field, 2 oz shaving cream but eye drops come in a 20ml bottle and so on. Guess that's what globalization does for ya.
  • yardie 14y ago
    I'm an American that grew up during the time they "tried" to go metric and none of this surprises me. Volumes are tricky for me, but I have no problem going from imperial to metric. Most other countries see the US and are like, "why aren't you using metric?" and we're like, "what's in it for us?" We learned metric in school and it's great, for exact measurements. Sometimes you just want to use what you have and not think about it. I don't know what 310mL is, I know how to measure 2 cups of water with...2 cups of water. Speaking of globalization, TVs are still sold and classified in inches :-)
    • evolve2k 14y ago
      TV's in inches? Maybe but at best you are half right. http://www.buytvsonline.com.au/products/?filter=25 http://www.buytvsonline.com.au/products/?filter=25
    • eru 14y ago
      > I don't know what 310mL is, I know how to measure 2 cups of water with...2 cups of water. Do your cups come only in one size? (And aren't the bigger coffee mugs standardized to 200ml?)
    • onetwothreefour 14y ago
      "Speaking of globalization, TVs are still sold and classified in inches :-)" Nope...
      • yardie 14y ago
        Samsung UE75ES9000S - 75 inches Samsung UE65ES8000Z - 65 inches Samsung UE32D6200W - 32 inches LG 55LM960V - 55 inches LG 47LM960V - 46 inches Notice a pattern, yet?
        • onetwothreefour 14y ago
          No? You're assuming things that aren't true in a lot of countries.
  • eloisant 14y ago
    To be fair, non-metric units are also use worldwide in some specific fields. In aeronautics, height is in feet. In a boat, distance are nautic miles (not even the same miles as Americans on the road). Quick quiz: what's the diagonal size of your laptop screen in centimeters? Your mobile phone? So it doesn't matter if you use completely unrelated metrics for different things. When you want to buy a laptop you know how many inches you want. When you swim, you know what a 50 meters pool means. But do you care how many laptop diagonals you're swimming? Probably not. Now back to US switching to metrics: I think the real argument in favor of sticking to imperial is the cost and risk of the switch. Risk because confusion between metrics could lead to a catastrophe (example: filling the tank of a plane with liters when it should be the same number of gallons).
    • rohern 14y ago
      You understand, though, that the reason laptop screens are measured this way is because of America's continued use of the imperial system.
      • curiousdannii 14y ago
        Yes, TV screens are measured in cms, no reason why computer screens couldn't be too.
    • mikeash 14y ago
      Nautical miles are used in aviation as well. In both cases, the use actually has a very good, albeit obsolete, reason: one nautical mile is equal to one arc minute of latitude on the Earth, to within reasonable accuracy. Very handy for navigation, at least when you didn't have a magic black box to do it for you. I previously had a flight computer with two displays, each of which showed the distance to the next waypoint. One showed the distance in nautical miles, the other in statute. I could never remember which was which, and always had to look at both and see which number was bigger. Silly measuring systems. We should measure everything in planck units. Personally, I think the cost argument goes in the other direction. It's true that there would be costs to switching, even potentially lives lost. But there are constant, ongoing costs to having mixed units, potentially including lives lost (and certainly very expensive space probes lost). To me, that says that we should switch as quickly as possible to stop that ongoing cost. It may cost more up-front, but the cost of switching eventually ends, while the cost of staying as we are never stops.
  • ubernostrum 14y ago
    My experience has been that the US and Canada are still "mixed" enough that it's highly noticeable. And I hear it's similar in the UK. The main differences are absence of an official government position (UK and Canada both have that, but with exceptions and/or significant numbers of people just ignoring it), and we still use Fahrenheit for temperature (amusing since the degree Celsius is arguably less "metric" and more just SI). Otherwise, it seems a largely arbitrary toss-up as to what will be metric in any of the three countries and what won't.
  • HCIdivision17 14y ago
    At my last job, we measured product thickness in mm; area in square feet; throughput in meters per minute; coating thickness in nm, angstroms, or fraction multiples of 550nm; weight in tons (imperial) but some input materials in grams and kilograms; and pressure in hPa, atmospheres, psi, and torr (occasionally in the same sentence and graphed logarithmically in some cases). Basically, we use units like any tool. Use whatever tick marks line up to the problem conveniently. You can always covert later if you need to.
• stinos 14y ago
  what a coincidence, just yesterday I saw a comedian making fun of UK&US for not using the metric system and instead something he considered archaic
  • yarrel 14y ago
    Imperial is very visible in the UK (for road instances and for beer glasses in particular) but the country is pretty much metric now and has been for decades.
    • jamesjguthrie 14y ago
      I disagree that the UK is metric at all. They try to teach us to think metric in school but in the real world almost everything is still imperial. We hear imperial units every day in this country. We hear it when we discuss body weight, driving distance, cooking, size of most things, etc.
      • EliRivers 14y ago
        I'm British. I live in the UK. I'm in my thirties. I do a person's height in casual conversation (on forms I write it in metres) and driving distance in Imperial measurements (often; I use kilometres when I'm talking to someone I trust to know what a kilometre is, which is generally anyone under about 40). I do depth and altitude in metres, but sometimes I'll use an old chart that has feet (or sometimes fathoms, but that's the really, really old charts). Volume, mass, everything else is metric. I know my mass in kg. I've only the vaguest idea what a "stone" is. A pound? An ounce? Those are twee measurements I sometimes see in old books. I know how much a litre is. I don't even know what the metric unit of volume is. Cubic inches? That seems clumsy even for Imperial units. At the supermarket, the unit used on the fruit, veg and meat is kilogrammes. Last weekend I was comparing pork by cost per kilogramme. Which supermarket do you shop at that uses... I don't even know what you'd use. Not stones, I guess? Pounds and ounces? I remember at about age ten someone telling me the temperature in Fahrenheit, and having no idea whether that was hot or cold. I have less idea today of what it means. Where this is going is that I thoroughly disagree. Additional edits, for the fun of it: "Though I bet you don't go to Asda and ask where you can find 2.272 litres of milk." Fair enough. I do buy milk in pints. If they switched to 2 litre bottles, I'd still buy it, and frankly I'd prefer it if they did. At the moment, I have to look at the scale on the side of the milk marked in litres to see how much I'm pouring into something (because the recipe I'm using specifies litres or millilitres; maybe there's a whole dual-industry for recipes in which you get Imperial units and I get metric; I note that the recipes on the BBC list both units; Jamie Oliver's web page is metric, Delia Smith is both, Hairy Bikers are metric, I've given up looking after those high-ranking four, but I note that not one of them is this Imperial only thing you talked about). "Do you ever do mile-per-gallon approximations for your fuel economy?" Fair enough. I don't drive so this is a closed book to me. "Do you ever buy a steak at a nice restaurant?" Yes, often. I have never once specified a mass the steak is to have. That it is marked on the menu in crazy measurements has always seemed a twee restaurant kind of thing; cosmetic rather than meaningful. The meat at the supermarket is, of course, in kg. "Have you ever played golf or football?" Never golf, and football not since I was about ten. Perhaps we simply move in different circles. You're with the Imperials, I'm with the metrics. "Where are you?" Deep south. Hampshire. As a drifting aside, I note that London is now approximately 40% non-British born, so that presumably means that about 40% of people living in London have even less grasp of Imperial measurements than I do. Perhaps metric is more common in the south. Steak update: I am sure I have specified the steak by name, and its name is "Ten ounce" or "Eight ounce" or whatever. It is as meaningful to me as "Medium bowl of custard" or "large bowl of custard", for example. If you gave me a big bucket of sand and asked me to put about ten ounces of sand in a cup, I'd have no idea at all. I seem to recall that I once saw an ounce of butter and it was kind of about "this" big". I'd probably use that as a base. Ramsay: A ha. Ramsay, of course, is Scottish. Maybe Scotland isn't metric.
• jamesjguthrie 14y ago
  I look forward to everywhere using metric. I'm in the UK, 27 and still struggle at times to comprehend lbs, ounces, stone, feet, inches, yards, miles etc., when everything I was taught in school was in metres, litres, newtons and kilogrammes.
  • ErrantX 14y ago
    Also in the UK. Apart from lengths (feet vs. metres) I don't really find myself needing to calculate between the different units. I couldn't tell you how many litres in a 4 pint bottle of milk (or a pint of beer :)) but all other milk (or beer) is sold with those units, so I can easily compare. I mean, we are supposed to be metric - but there are plenty of imperial measures in use (height, is another obvious example).
    • mootothemax 14y ago
      height, is another obvious example Strangely enough, whilst I'm fine with lengths and distances in metres, the minute someone tries to tell me how tall they are in metres and centimetres, I'm completely thrown. It's the one conversion I pathetically still really struggle with (UK -> Poland in this case).
      • nathell 14y ago
        I had the very same problem, only in the opposite direction, living in Poland for the first 27 years of my life and moving to the UK just over a year ago. Just bear in mind that 6ft is approximately 180 cm, anything above is above, and anything lower is lower. This gives you a first approximation with only remembering one number. Also, 4in is about 10cm and is easy to add/subtract both ways. This might not be very exact, but it will give you a quick idea.
        • jamesjguthrie 14y ago
          One note I like to remember is that a foot is the length of a school ruler, everybody remembers the size of a school ruler.
• ddorian43 14y ago
  Did any of these petitions accomplished anything?
• Tloewald 14y ago
  Sad it only has 237 votes as of my visit (waiting for my acct to validate so I can sign). The problem is, I think the US has already declared itself to be metric to little effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_Conversion_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_Conversion_Act It's not the do-nothing congress this time, it's the learn-nothing public.
  • ry0ohki 14y ago
    Just a simple measure like forcing all government signs to use metric would go a long way.
• deleted 14y ago
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• criley 14y ago
  Good idea, but a bad writeup. A serious "lol" at the metric system being more precise. Easier to use does not equate to "more precise". In many cases, the metric system is less precise, as it demands that all measurements fit into base 10. Base 10 makes it easier for us to do calculations in our head and understand, but it does NOT improve precision. In many cases, it removes precision in exchange for the base 10 ease of use. And anyone who thinks a metric conversion will do anything for science obviously knows nothing of American science -- which has used the metric system almost exclusively for a very long time.
• sigzero 14y ago
  I don't see this ever happening. There just isn't a push from within to do it.
• deleted 14y ago
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  • leovingi 14y ago
    So before creating a petition and asking Americans to sign it, if they agree with it, we should first ask Americans if they want it? Preferably with a petition of some sort, right?
  • deleted 14y ago
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    • gordaco 14y ago
      And Matt Inman. http://theoatmeal.com/pl/senior_year/science http://theoatmeal.com/pl/senior_year/science More seriously, I can understand the power of habit, but the imperial system looks, well, pretty insane from a non-accustomed point of view.
• tmrhmd 14y ago
  I don't think politicians would ever allow this, especially during these times, since the proposed change would cost millions in change of signs and anything where the imperial system is used.
  • davorb 14y ago
    You would save that pretty easily in not having to write separate software/everything for the US and for the rest of the world. Not to mention things like http://articles.cnn.com/1999-09-30/tech/9909_30_mars.metric.02_1_climate-orbiter-spacecraft-team-metric-system?_s=PM:TECH http://articles.cnn.com/1999-09-30/tech/9909_30_mars.metric....
• RyanMcGreal 14y ago
  Metrickery is a socialist plot to weaken America. First it's units of measurement divisible by ten, then it's universal health care, then gun control, and finally off to the gulag for the last remaining freethinkers. Sadly, there are people who believe more of less exactly what I just wrote.
  • javert 14y ago
    Actually, the "Europe is better and the US is inferior" mantra, which is very widely held in the American left-of-center, is a significant factor in all of those.
    • RyanMcGreal 14y ago
      As a Canadian, I'd be inclined to call it the "every other industrialized liberal democracy on earth is better" mantra. Countries tend to converge on an optimal balance of individual liberties and social protections because it measurably works. The US is a notable outlier, and the various comparative social and economic indicators are pretty damning evidence that the continued American insistence on an 18th century approach to governance actually is inferior to a number of other approaches that have been more inclined to take evidence-based best practices into account.
      • javert 14y ago
        > Countries tend to converge on an optimal balance of individual liberties and social protections because it measurably works. That's just utter nonsense. What measurement are you optimizing for? What makes you think that moving the US to the left moves it closer to, say, Germany, instead of closer to, say, Brazil, India, and Mexico (which is what I think will happen)? And even if it did move it closer to Germany, I wouldn't want that, which speaks to the fact that your "measurably works" claim probably refers to some non-objective sense of optimality. > the continued American insistence on an 18th century approach to governance That's a straw man. Predominating sentiments in the GOP are strongly contra the Founding Fathers. I mean, George W. Bush greatly expanded the welfare state.
• SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago
  Before we start with the standard junk about "imperial measures are better because they are easier to understand / better suited to human scale / etc." can I say nope. The only advantage that imperial measures have (for some) is that they are familiar. That's the sum total of it. People where were raised metric find these apologies for imperial measures to be pure gibberish.
  • rjdagost 14y ago
    These "apologies" are not gibberish. Measurements units are like words in that they are conventions that enough people agree with to make them useful as a way of communicating. Measurement units exist to help us quantify our world and if two systems do this equally well then there is no recompelling reason to switch. Besides which, what problem would be solved in the process? People will use whatever units they prefer anyways at the end of the day. As a negative, forcing top-down change would irritate people.
    • SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago
      > Measurement units exist to help us quantify our world and if two systems do this equally well then there is no recompelling reason to switch. The world is already nine-tens of the way through the switch. This is a compelling reason to finish the job.
  • brudgers 14y ago
    "Familiar" is a bit off target because it implies that use is a matter of individual choice. The system is embedded in standards, such as SAE. It is embedded in industries such as construction. It is embedded into statutes, regulations, and deeds for real property. Yes, the system is familiar, but wiping the slate clean and starting anew is not a feature of stable democracies.
    • SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago
      > (The Imperial system) is embedded in industries such as construction. It is embedded into statutes, regulations, and deeds for real property. So is the metric system now in most of the world. And where the non-metric world has to interact with the rest of us, metric is embedded in their processes too. E.g. science done in the U.S. and engineering goods made for export in the US. This comment http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4996646 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4996646 discusses some of the same issues.
• jcfrei 14y ago
  related question to people from the US: did you actually learn the metric system in primary school? did you learn it besides the imperial units? I believe as Tloewald pointed out that the adoption really depends on whether people are learning it and not what politicians declare to be the standard.
  • davidw 14y ago
    You learn it, but academically. Growing up with everything in feet, miles, pounds, etc... you get a feel for whether to put on a sweater if it's supposed to be 60 degrees out or not, or how long it might take to drive 10 miles on the freeway, or about how far 20 feet is. So even for someone like myself who has lived in Europe for a long time, metric units don't feel quite as 'native' or ingrained, except for temperatures, because you deal with those every day.
  • _phred 14y ago
    Yep, learned metric as well as imperial, and how to convert between the two. Primary school was ~20 years ago for me. High school science was all in SI, of course.
  • dfxm12 14y ago
    I can't remember if it was primary school or high school, but I learned it. It was not beside the imperial units. Those were learned first (and very early) while metric was taught as a part of science classes.
  • smackfu 14y ago
    You learn it, but you don't use it practically outside the classroom. So the units don't get ingrained in your thinking. You really need to use the units for cooking, for personal measurements like height and weight, for driving, for weather, to really get used to them.
• Keyframe 14y ago
  ISO 216 paper sizes while you're at it, please!
  • alsothings 14y ago
    yes! As a US expat in europe, this never ceases to cause me trouble. Plus the A size ratios are just lovely.
  • masklinn 14y ago
    Damn that would be nice, any time I see US paper sizes I go "WTH? Legal? What are you talking about?"
    • deleted 14y ago
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  • TomAnthony 14y ago
    I'm surprised paper hasn't formed a larger part of this discussion. The 'A' system for paper has many advantages, and actually would be something that could be accessibly changed (all printers and scanners handle it just fine).
    • masklinn 14y ago
      > The 'A' system for paper has many advantages The ISO system in general, ISO 216 and 269 provide 3 series (A, B and C, A is the base series, B is the geometric mean between two sizes of the A series, C is the geometric mean between the A and B series at a given index, and is thus mostly used for envelopes for the A series: an envelope Cn will hold an An sheet without folding, and of course a Cn envelope will fit an A(n-1) folded in two)
• davidw 14y ago
  The way I explain this one to my European friends is: Do you remember the transition to the Euro? How you had to mentally convert prices at first? And how old people had more difficulties with it in some cases? Now, imagine that, not just for one unit, but weights, lengths, temperatures and volumes, all at the same time.
  • scotchmi_st 14y ago
    The UK managed the switch from imperial to metric okay. It's really not that hard.
    • davidw 14y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication#United_Kingdom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication#United_Kingdom Would indicate that the process has being going on for some 40 years and is still not at all complete. That to me indicates that it's not "easy" either.
      • curiousdannii 14y ago
        Then look at one of the many other countries that have completed it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication#Chronology_and_status_of_conversion_by_country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication#Chronology_and_stat...
    • UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
      Mostly okay. Our roads are still in miles per hour, and we still sell a "pint." But at least food labels are all metric.
    • rmc 14y ago
      They still haven't converted. Miles & Miles per hour are still used for driving.
  • Tichy 14y ago
    When do you even deal with these things on a day-to-day basis? These days most people buy prepackaged stuff from the supermarket. I don't think many people go to market stalls and struggle telling the merchant how many potatoes they want. I mean, some do, but it's rare enough that they would probably figure it out quickly.
• jacquesm 14y ago
  It very likely is never going to happen. The main reason for resistance apparently is the various land boundaries that would have to be re-scaled to metric, which would be a source of endless legal wrangling. Already houses in the US have the longest history attached to them, sometimes all the way from the homesteading days if the plot is old. I've used both metric and imperial, for construction imperial is lots easier, for physics and other things that involve frequent conversions metric is far easier. The Canadians officially have metric, try buying a 250x125 sheet of plywood. Everybody will look at you as if water is burning.
  • lmm 14y ago
    >Already houses in the US have the longest history attached to them, sometimes all the way from the homesteading days if the plot is old. That's young by European standards. Somehow we managed the conversion.
    • brudgers 14y ago
      How many European countries are there? How many of them have had the same government for 230 years? The US surveyed and then subdivided much of a continent into townships. Land was sold and granted by the section, halfs and quarters thereof. Flying over the Midwest, the manifold rectangles on the ground show how problematic even the slightest of conversion errors would be. Maybe it's technical debt. But it exists because the legal system is stable.
      • jacquesm 14y ago
        How many of them even have the same borders over the last 230 years? I'd wager very few.
        • brudgers 14y ago
          I think the reference for US borders is probably better put at 150 years - outside of Hawaii.
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• dickbasedregex 14y ago
  At the risk of being lumped in with the negative/unhelpful/HN-is-on-the-decline comment crowd, and I hate naysaying here but... Seriously? 1) If you haven't seen enough of these White House Polls go by yet (and there is a never ending list of inanity, for example: http://www.modernman.com/12-dumbest-whitehouse-petitions/ http://www.modernman.com/12-dumbest-whitehouse-petitions/) let me clue you in. They do nothing. Nothing. No one reads them. Just go back to wishing on a star. 2) The belief that something like this would ever be on the White House's radar/todo list is honestly just retarded. 3) Why is this even here? This isn't Reddit. The focus of HN is pretty nebulous these days but this is well outside the realm of entrepreneurship and programming which I believe has always sort of been at the heart of HN. 4) Rabble rabble HN is in decline.
  • Avalaxy 14y ago
    It does have a lot to do with programming actually. I'm building an international application and I have to convert all my dimensions and weights to make it work in the US.
    • robin_reala 14y ago
      It gets even more awkward when it’s not just output: we’ve got a refine-by-height range slider in our system that I’m having to localise.
    • dickbasedregex 14y ago
      No. It has as much to do with programming as currency conversion does. It's a problem involving numbers that people occasionally solve with the use of code. By your logic beanie babies have a lot to do with programming because someone built a site to list and sell them online (ebay). But hey, the metric system seems more sensible to me too. Edit I don't mean to come off as a jerk. I haven't slept yet and just got a BS call from m boss so I'll probably read this later and wish I were more diplomatic.
  • AYBABTME 14y ago
    Everytime I try to use data that comes from public US sources, it's a PITA to deal with Imperial Units. It does have an impact on programmers/developers/engineers/etc. Just reading news about weather or some climatic phenomenon, all in Fahrenheit. Wth, Fahrenheit.
• jesusabdullah 14y ago
  > the imprecise Imperial Unit englilsh units aren't any less precise than SI/metric ones. They're just more awkward and less used worldwide. The cases which I find particularly irritating in US units are lb mass vs. lb force, and HP/BTU/foot-pounds/calories/Calories (and kWh) when all you need is a J.
• thinkling 14y ago
  It's nice to be reminded that there will always be fresh waves of not-yet-cynical people to take up issues like this. But boy, am I cynical about the chances on this one. The wikipedia article on Metrication in the US [1] isn't the best article ever but is worth reading for mentions of previous efforts. A few things: - the US Congress has in various ways 'blessed' the metric system, more than any other. However... > Proponents of the metric system in the U.S. often claim that "the United States, Liberia, and Burma (or Myanmar) are the only countries that have not adopted the metric system." This statement is not correct with respect to the U.S., and probably it isn't correct with respect to Liberia and Burma, either. The U.S. adopted the metric system in 1866. What the U.S. has failed to do is to restrict or prohibit the use of traditional units in areas touching the ordinary citizen [2] Did you know that Jefferson proposed a decimal system for the US before the SI system had come about? (See e.g. [2].) There were also proposals to measure land in decimal units rather than in 640-acre sections. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_State... [2] http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/usmetric.html http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/usmetric.html
• davvid 14y ago
  I think most engineers would naturally support this idea. The reality is that doing something like this is pretty tough because the current system has so much weight. It's akin to asking a company to abandon a perfectly functioning legacy software system just so that someone can rewrite it. My dad was an engineer with Caltrans and he told me about how California was ready to make the switch. It was going to be a gradual transition where signage would start listing both metric and imperial speed limits. They had actually gotten pretty far along into designing signs, etc. He told me that the state eventually killed it because no politicians supported it and there was no strong desire from the public. While I think this is a great idea, I don't have my hopes up. Apparently the state did a lot of work actually switching over to the metric system (all manuals, standards, etc. were updated to metric) but the plan was eventually aborted in favor of English units and much effort was then spent on switching back. :-/ http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/oppd/metric1/DD-12-R1_Final.pdf http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/oppd/metric1/DD-12-R1_Final.pdf http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/oppd/metric1/metricpg.htm http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/oppd/metric1/metricpg.htm
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• attheodo 14y ago
  Metric system is way more understandable and easy to mentally manipulate. The only good argument against standardizing it, is people are used to it for many years. But so were my grandparents with our country's currency before we switched to Euro. There's an awkward "bootcamp" period where you just convert every unit to the old one just to get the feeling of the "quantity" but after a couple of months the new units feel normal.
• rohern 14y ago
  Every objection that is being raised on this thread was raised when other countries enacted metrication. You are free to read the history of these processes. Nations did not collapse and people learned how to use new units. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication I would more support a petition that was well and cogently written, however.
• goodcanadian 14y ago
  Only vaguely relevant, but I grew up in a rural area in Canada which caused me to learn a strange set of units. For me, highway distances are measured in kilometres, but country roads are measured in miles. Groceries are priced per kilogram, but my weight is in pounds. I readily swap inches and centimetres for measuring small sizes and distances (sometimes on the same project). I am more comfortable with Celsius, but the thermostat in my parents' house was in Fahrenheit. Just to throw an additional wrench into things, prior to official metrification (which technically predates my birth), Canada used "imperial" (i.e. British) units, not "standard" (i.e. U.S.) units. Because of this and the close proximity to the U.S., one had to be careful about just which gallon or pint you were talking about. People younger and/or more urban than me seem to be 100% metric. I am starting to learn my weight in kilograms, but I still have no idea what my height is in cm without converting.
  • RyanMcGreal 14y ago
    Canada also has so-called weak metric measurements: 454g of butter (1 lb), 354 ml of pop (12 oz) and so on.
    • goodcanadian 14y ago
      Yes, though I think this is largely due to trade with the U.S.. It probably helps keep some standard units alive in Canada.
      • gutnor 14y ago
        Indeed in country fully converted to metric, the old unit are converted to their closest sane metric equivalent. For example, my grand-mother still talks about buying a pound of stuff. However a pound is now understood as meaning 0.5 kg, we even learn it that way in school.
  • OriginalSyn 14y ago
    I would hazard a guess that we're roughly the same age because I grew up with the same mixture of units but I think it's less to do with growing up in a rural area than the fact that your parents and grandparents were educated on imperial units and even though metric was standard by the time you were born, the imperial system was still ingrained in your elders and some of that nomenclature was passed on to you. When I talk to anyone over 50 I have to be careful to remember when they say it got to -70 a few years ago they are most likely saying it was -70F and not -70*C.
• fennecfoxen 14y ago
  There's a couple of things you'd want to consider converting to metric: long distances, short distances/dimensions, volumes, weights, and temperature come to mind. Long distances: swap out a bunch of highway signs, consider that 60mph (a mile a minute) ~= 100km/h, not too hard on people but a lot of signage needs to change. Feasible. Volumes: people are used enough to 2-liter bottles of soda, expect the 3.78 liter milk to stay around for a while because of supply chains. Gas prices will be modestly interesting for people, but really easy on the industry. Short distances/dimensions: now things get tricky and potentially expensive. There are a lot of fractional-dimensioned parts out there in industry in different supply chains. Weights: 2.2lb = 1kg and you're pretty good. Nobody really uses ounces anyway! Temperature: Here's the thing about temperature: converting would be relatively useless because Real People don't do math with the temperature outside. Even scientists don't do math with the temperature outside all that much. For most people, a scale that starts at 0="civilization shuts down because you can't ice the roads" and goes up to 100="heatstroke territory" is a fine representation of humanity's day to day temperature. Why would we bother changing it?
  • bruceboughton 14y ago
    > For most people, a scale that starts at 0="civilization shuts down because you can't ice the roads" and goes up to 100="heatstroke territory" is a fine representation of humanity's day to day temperature. Why would we bother changing it? I thought you were talking about Celsius at first...
  • sterna 14y ago
    Mecanical parts are the most difficult thing to switch because there are many things defined in relation to one another. For example the american UNC threads have different angles than the metric ones do and therefore it is impossible to replace one with another. For this reason alone it will take very long time to do a full switch from one unit system to another. However, many "metric" units are actually slightly adapted imperial ones. For instance you can get a lot of 25 mm stuff in Europe that is almost equivalent to the 1 inch stuff you get in the US (1 inch = 25.4 mm) and similarly there is a lot of 30 cm and 60 cm stuff in stead of 1 foot and 2 feet stuff.
  • 14y ago
• sterna 14y ago
  Regionalized units have the same damaging effect to manufacturing as closed software ecosystems has to software development. The only reason most US citizens do not feel the pain of this fragmentation is that they do not have to buy anything that is not adapted to the US market. Again, this is because the US is the biggest market on the planet and thus it is profitable for big companies to adapt their products to US standards. However, supporting several unit systems is a huge tax on startup companies that work in manufacturing and therefore they reduce innovation and competition, causing harm to everybody along the way.
  • mosburger 14y ago
    This is actually an argument, for some people in the U.S., to keep using imperial units. The use of imperial units acts as sort of an "artificial trade barrier" to foreign competition - it's like a tariff that international trade agreements can't touch.
    • achy 14y ago
      That is a ridiculous argument for a country that is already so heavily reliant on foreign manufacturing. If anything, at this point, the imperial standard is a barrier to having the US become a manufacturing nation once again - because so much industrial technology has been developed without a thought to the archaic measurements.
• veidr 14y ago
  It's obviously a great idea, and obviously (to Americans) unlikely to happen in the lifetime of anybody reading this forum. Does anybody else from America remember being taught the metric system in public elementary school, and being told that we'd be switching to it over the next few years? I was taught this around second grade (1981), I think based on the Metric Conversion Act of 1975 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_Conversion_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_Conversion_Act), which was not just signed by some random interweb tubers -- it was signed into law by the president. But IIRC, it was a toothless and impotent piece of legislation that was effectively stymied by the US auto industry. P.S. Amusing visual evidence that the US system sucks: http://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/metric-system-1024x450.png http://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/metric-...
  • tych0 14y ago
    Sorry, but how is that picture evidence that the US system sucks? I don't disagree that we have a poor system, but "everyone else is doing it" has never been a justification to do anything!
    • tonyedgecombe 14y ago
      If everyone else was using tcp/ip would it be sensible to continue using ipx/spx?
      • AutoKorrect 14y ago
        yeah, if you wanted to keep the hackers out
        • derleth 14y ago
          Ask Sony how well security through obscurity's been working out for them.
    • danneu 14y ago
      Every time one of the red countries does business with the grey countries, there's conversion deadweight.
• noselasd 14y ago
  Might as well start now - these things take time. In Norway, we introduced the metric system in 1889, but there's still a lot of non-metric measurements still around, at least in common speak. * Length of a boat are measured in feet. * Lumber is measured in inches, two-by-four and so on. * Most engines are measured in horsepower(though nowadays the kw/h is usually given as well). * Firewood have different measures, most of them derived from the pre-metric system. * distances at sea are measured in nautic miles * Boat speed is measured in knots. (not sure what the status of these last 2 is regarding SI these days).
  • ubernostrum 14y ago
    Boat speed is measured in knots. Knots are non-SI, since they're based on the non-SI nautical mile (1 knot = 1nm/hr). But they are a good example of why context is important; the nautical mile is absolutely superior to the kilometer for use in navigation (at sea or in the air). Forcing the SI unit there would actually make the relevant tasks more complex and more difficult.
    • guard-of-terra 14y ago
      "the nautical mile is absolutely superior to the kilometer for use in navigation (at sea or in the air)." Why is that?
      • ubernostrum 14y ago
        It solves headaches that come from trying to project the not-flat earth onto flat charts. As Wikipedia puts it: "In most projections, scale varies with latitude, so on small scale maps, covering large areas and a wide range of latitudes, the linear scale must show the scale for the range of latitudes covered by the map." "Mariners generally use the nautical mile, which, because a nautical mile is approximately equal to a minute of latitude, can be measured against the latitude scale at the sides of the chart."
      • cygx 14y ago
        On earth, the meridian has an approximate length of 20,003.93m. 20,003.93km / 180 / 60 ≈ 1,852.22m ≈ 1,852m = 1NM Note, however, that 20,003.93km / 200 / 100 ≈ 1,000.20m ≈ 1,000m = 1km so if we used gradians/gon where the full turn corresponds to 400 instead of 360, the kilometer would be an approximation as good as the (international) nautical mile.
• lifeformed 14y ago
  I understand and agree that metric is strictly better, how much better is it? Do the benefits outweigh the costs of changing the whole system?
  • SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago
    What about the recurring cost that we have now of using both systems?
    • ScottWhigham 14y ago
      I'll play along. What "recurring cost"?
      • SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago
        As mentioned elsewhere on this page: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4996563 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4996563 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4996646 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4996646 And also things like the occasional cost of writing off a Mars probe (and they aren't cheap) because not enough was spent on checking unit conversions.
• AlexeiSadeski 14y ago
  I could care less about using metric, but don't touch Fahrenheit. Celsius (water based) is inferior to Fahrenheit (air based) for those of us whom just so happen to reside in the atmosphere instead of the sea.
  • Thrymr 14y ago
    It's more accurate to say Fahrenheit is brine based. 0°F was based on the freezing point of a brine solution used by Ole Rømer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B8mer_scale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B8mer_scale
• krschultz 14y ago
  Most of the comments in this thread are talking about the units for personal height, weight, local road signs or for the weather forecast. Those are by far the least important things to be worried about. All of those things are local and there is no carrying cost for them. There would be a cost to change all those signs and forecasts - for no real gain. However, dimensions of physical goods are a constant recurring cost to the economy. Anything that crosses the borders for trade (all resources mined/farmed, everything manufactured) has to be dealt with in both sets of units. There is massive redundancy in fasteners, components, scales, paperwork, etc. It requires companies to keep two sets of tools (and not just wrenches, also drills, taps, dies, cutters, etc).
  • graeme 14y ago
    Good point. In Canada, we still use imperial measures for body height and body weight, and many older folks still talk in miles and fahrenheit. But everyone adjusted to metric for less personal weights and measures, and other abstract measures. Pretty good compromise, I think.
    • decasteve 14y ago
      Another Canadian here (Maritimer). With temperature I find many people talk about the weather in Celsius but the temperature of their homes/thermostats in Fahrenheit. Swimming pools also measured in Fahrenheit. Gym weights, except in Olympic lifting competition, everyone talks lbs. While in the UK I noticed everyone measures weight in stone (1 stone = 14 lbs).
      • eru 14y ago
        Yes. The gym weights I found in the UK where in kg, though.
      • dcminter 14y ago
        I used to think in stone. But I don't need to know my weight very often and when I do it's usually for ski bindings at european resorts - so now I find myself thinking in kilograms. The only non-metric unit that I think in now is miles - and there are obvious safety/legal problems in switching our speed limit road signs to kilometers.
• VaedaStrike 14y ago
  Ironic that a post designed to attempt to rid the world of obfuscation and confusion has a UI that commits the cardinal sin of auto loading the signature list so that it's virtually impossible to get to the footer without letting all the signatures load. :) Reminds me of getting classes on water conservation in High School only to walk outside of class and see that they are watering the High School's parking lot. How very often the government evokes the classic hypocritical parent of the old anti-drug campaign commercial of the 1980's where the son finally breaks and yells at his Father "I learned it by watching you Dad!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-Elr5K2Vuo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-Elr5K2Vuo
• Zash 14y ago
  Please do this. Regards, The rest of the World.
• micampe 14y ago
  Not the first time it's been tried: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_State...
• mosburger 14y ago
  One argument some people make against switching away from imperial units - it acts as sort of an artificial trade barrier for foreign competition. It costs non-domestic manufacturers more to package their products for distribution in the United States, making it sort of a "tariff" for foreign goods that international trade agreements can't touch.
  • huherto 14y ago
    But it works both ways. It is a "tariff" when you want to export.
    • mosburger 14y ago
      I didn't claim the argument made sense. :)
  • achy 14y ago
    That is a ridiculous argument for a country that is already so heavily reliant on foreign manufacturing. If anything, at this point, the imperial standard is a barrier to having the US become a manufacturing nation once again - because so much industrial technology has been developed without a thought to the archaic measurements.
• smackfu 14y ago
  While we are at it, why not standardize: * date and time formats * language * time zones * currency Seems about as easy and has the same kind of benefits.
  • SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago
    > Why not standardise ... date and time formats There are two ways to do dates and times (especially when sending machine-readable data across the web): 1) ISO 8601 2) A world of pain. Personally, I prefer option 1. So, that one is done. The "world of pain" with US/UK date formats is that code that's not even written yet can fail to interoperate, but only when it's deployed to a different machine with different system defaults and only after the 13th of the month rolls around. That kind of landmine is an unacceptable feature for a format to have.
  • redial 14y ago
    It seems to me that time zones are standard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_time
    • smackfu 14y ago
      For the most part, although daylight-saving time rules are very non-standard even from year to year.
• tokenadult 14y ago
  From the petitions.whitehouse.gov petition kindly submitted for comment here: "The United States is one of the few countries left in the world who still have not converted to using the Metric System as a standardized system of measurement. Instead of going along with what the rest of the world uses, we stubbornly still adhere to using the imprecise Imperial Unit - despite the fact that practically every other country that we interact with uses Metric." This petition has the same problem most petitions submitted to the White House have--its factual premise is incorrect. I'm an American who has lived in another country (Taiwan) for years. The National Institute of Standards and Technology reports that "The United States is now the only industrialized country in the world that does not use the metric system as its predominant system of measurement." http://www.nist.gov/pml/wmd/metric/upload/1136a.pdf http://www.nist.gov/pml/wmd/metric/upload/1136a.pdf But the same government report notes that ". . . . In 1866, Congress authorized the use of the metric system in this country and supplied each state with a set of standard metric weights and measures. "In 1875, the United States solidified its commitment to the development of the internationally recognized metric system by becoming one of the original seventeen signatory nations to the Treaty of the Meter." In other words, the United States has treated the Metric System as official and legal since before my great-grandfather was born. The customary measurement system is, by contrast, simply customary, not mandatory. The United States has been metric since 1866 "in the sense that Americans have been free since that time to use the metric system as much as they like." http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/usmetric.html http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/usmetric.html If a particular individual or corporation engaged in manufacturing or trade wants to use metric measurements to meet customer needs and gain a profit, no one in the United States is stopping that. If someone desires to use customary measurements out of sheer habit from long-established custom, no one is stopping that either. My late dad the industrial engineer was aware of plenty of industries in the United States that from the 1970s, at the latest, had gone fully metric simply because those industries were involved in vigorous international trade. Perhaps the best governmental nudge that can be given for more use of metric measurements in the United States is more encouragement of developing international markets for domestic businesses. I note that customary measurements are often used in other countries even long after metric measurements are adopted officially. For example, the Republic of China (the regime that governs Taiwan at present) has been officially metric since before I was born. Japan (the former governing country in Taiwan) was metric from the 1920s. But the unit of weight for vegetables bought in an open-air market in Taiwan is still the traditional 斤 (jin "catty," or Chinese pound), although that is now standardized at 500g. Prices are given in monetary units per 斤 for most fruits and vegetables to this day in markets in Taiwan (and in China). A Facebook friend with a scientific education recently told me about the saying "A pint's a pound, the whole world round." If the United States begins using metric-standard units more for selling foods and the like, then perhaps a half-kilogram (500g) package will be considered to be one new "pound," just as a half-liter (500ml) package will be considered to be one new "pint." It is interesting to me that traditional Chinese culture and traditional British culture both had weight units in that range, about a half kilogram even before standardization to metric units. How are grocery measurements treated in Britain these days?
• evolve2k 14y ago
  Why not start a bit of a geek pro metric movement to raise awareness on the issue. I could imagine some funny Tee's and stickers if nothing else.
• sakopov 14y ago
  I was born in Russia and used the metric system until i moved to the US. Imperial system is so archaic it's amusing to see a developed nation use it. A few centuries ago Russians used to measure weight in "handfuls" and short distances in "elbows." (scratch that, it's "cubits") When only a fraction of the population had any sort of education, it was easier for everyone to understand an anatomical measurement. Eh, some things never go away. I don't anticipate US dropping this... ever.
  • yareally 14y ago
    Sadly, we (US Citizens) all learn the Metric system starting in at least 7th grade (was for me at least back 15 some years ago). We continue to use it through High School for courses such as Chemistry and Physics as well as University studies. However, many of those that are not interested in going into a Science field tend to discount the Metric System in the United States as nothing more than a "means to an end" in order to get a passing grade. They quickly forget it or just pay lip service to it as they don't see the need for it outside of the classroom. Until that changes with some sort of mandate by the US Government, I'm afraid as you mentioned, the larger percentage of the United States will feel no need to care about the Metric System outside of a few Science courses they took back in school.
    • sakopov 14y ago
      You're absolutely right. Technical people would most likely embrace the switch. Everyone else will brush it off. I find that Americans are typically very cautious of any kind of change. Especially baby boomers. Let alone a change that is "imposed" by the rest of the world. That isn't going to fly here. We don't do things in the same way the rest of the world does them. That's just our mentality. Imagine a football field marked with metric units. Man, I just cringed a little bit. :)
  • eru 14y ago
    > [...] and short distances in "elbows." Cubit might be the word you were looking for.
    • 14y ago
• gcv 14y ago
  So we'd have to rename the quarter-pounder with cheese to royale with cheese?
• pelle 14y ago
  I grew up with the metric system but have now come to largely accept the imperial system as a more humane system. Nassim Taleb actually talks about the benefits of it in his latest book Anti-Fragile as well. The metric system is already used for anything important in the US and doesn't need to be further legislated. Look at any food item you buy in the supermarket it already has grams or ml on it. I wrote a piece a few years ago about this: http://stakeventures.com/articles/2007/08/28/in-defence-of-imperial-units http://stakeventures.com/articles/2007/08/28/in-defence-of-i...
• clinth 14y ago
  The real cost is in manufacturing and maintenance. What is the cost of replacing every machine, every factory, every load tolerance specified in every standard? Every screw, every nut. Things that need to work, in place for decades, which we can't arbitrarily take down. Power plants, water filtration systems. How would you roll it out? It's because the US is so large and industrialized that makes it expensive.
• drcube 14y ago
  We already have the metric system. An inch is defined as 2.54 centimeters. Et cetera. I can't think of a single way in which we're NOT metric, except that stubborn people refuse to let go of gallons, miles and pounds. Every item you buy in the stores will be measured in metric units. Just because we call it a gallon doesn't mean it isn't actually 3.785 liters. And just because the serving size is a cup, doesn't mean it isn't actually 240mL. And check the nutrition label sometimes. It's all metric. http://www.fda.gov/ucm/groups/fdagov-public/documents/image/ucm225384.jpg http://www.fda.gov/ucm/groups/fdagov-public/documents/image/... So what's the problem again?
  • mpyne 14y ago
    > So what's the problem again? America sucks and is like the worst thing to ever happen to the world. Or something, it all blends together eventually. Oddly no one ever makes a serious push to ban languages other than English or Mandarin Chinese throughout the world, or currency other than USD which would actually have beneficial effects on global interaction. Instead they compare the U.S. to Myanmar as if Americans should seriously be offended by that.
• JacksonGariety 14y ago
  Why do they have to make this page look like propaganda?
• edj 14y ago
  The US use of imperial units definitely requires a good bit of annoying overhead - owning two sets of socket wrenches and hex keys and never knwowing which one a manufacturer has used is just the first such inconvenience that comes to mind. So I agree that it's well past time to complete the switch. That said, I will miss imperial units if they go. There's a natural poetry to them that metric lacks. Imperial units seem to embody and communicate their own history - history of path-dependence and weird math, to be sure - while metric units seem too perfectly consistent, and therefore somehow sterile.
• Surio 14y ago
  Interesting war story around Imperial to Metric conversion errors. Relevant to the discussion... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider
• neves 14y ago
  Water is the most important substance for life in Earth. It boils at 100º centigrades and freezes at 0º centigrades 0.1m³ is one liter (1L) of water, so 1m³ is 1,000 liters of water 1L of water is 1 Kilogram The imperial system is awful, please bury it.
• introspectif 14y ago
  US uses US standard measures, not imperial.
• joeguilmette 14y ago
  Maybe it's just me but, while I agree with this, I would like our government to focus on gaining a certain level of basic competence. The last few years seem to have brought to light just how impotent and incapable the US legislature is. The other two branches seem to be doing fine, but I'd like to focus our attention on perhaps changing this ridiculous farce into something that might work, just a little bit. The big problem is that due to our system of govt any change will be brought of the back of legislation, which, unfortunately, will have to pass thru the broken and disfigured legislature. That said, I hope this petition succeeds :)
• lancefisher 14y ago
  There were still some kilometer markers on the roads in Alabama when I moved there in 1997. Apparently, the state spent $3.2 million to put up km markers and signs in addition to the mile markers and signs. This proved to be too confusing, and they were all taken down. Most the people I knew didn't miss them. http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1842&dat=19971128&id=Q8gnAAAAIBAJ&sjid=SscEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1434,4556205 http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1842&dat=19971128&...
  • simmons 14y ago
    I lived in Alabama for a while back in the metric days. The article you link to seems to confirm the general impression I had of how it went down. US: "We're switching to the metric system, everybody!" Alabama: "Yay! Switching to metric!" Alabama: "Okay guys, we've got all our new metric highway signs up, how's everyone else doing with theirs?" (crickets chirping) I personally thought the kilometer signs were pretty cool. The person's comment about the metric initiative being hard to defend when none of the other states followed through seems to ring true -- it's easy to see how the public might have thought they had been talked into a boondoggle.
• darkhorn 14y ago
  Well, you can make a change too. Don't use products that are not in metric.
• shmerl 14y ago
  Yep. It's long time overdue.
• kolbe 14y ago
  I'll just leave this here. http://www.theonion.com/articles/metric-system-thriving-in-nations-inner-cities,458/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/metric-system-thriving-in-n...
• deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
• andrewdubinsky 14y ago
  Don't we have bigger problems than this right now? Our schools are so badly mismanaged that we're not even graduating people who can use either standard. We've got millions of people unemployed who would love to turn a wrench regardless of metric or standard. (Not to cast aspersions at either party, they are both very nearly equally to blame)
• jonhendry 14y ago
  Never happen. The crazy right-wingers will see it as a another "sign" of the UN trying to take over the US.
• sudowrestler 14y ago
  I remember being at a 1971 conference in London, when a Brit asked a member of our party "When will the US go metric?" My buddy quipped without hesitation, "As soon as you Brits learn to drive on the right side of the road!"
• hcarvalhoalves 14y ago
  Just a note: Brazil adopts the metric system, but we measure diameters in inches and land in acres. Adopting the metric system doesn't mean getting rid of non-metric units, some things just make sense to measure in units that follow human scale.
• acomjean 14y ago
  I've Given up. BUT, the metric system in the US has ben usurped by base 10 US units. As a civil engineer the measuring tape was in feet and "tenths of feet". A "mil" is a thousandth of an inch. I worked for the US government civil engineers in the 1990's. They were going to issue contracts in metric years ago. I don't think they ever did.
• ComputerGuru 14y ago
  Everything else aside, can someone explain to me the obsession with fractions (w/out common denominators, even!) in the imperial system? I love metric, but I have no problem using the imperial system for my work - however, the fact that all objects made for the imperial system are built on fractions makes it impossible to work with. There is no 0.1" there's only 1/8. There is no 0.15", there's only 5/32. etc. Given the bottom is almost always a power of two (2, 4, 16, 32, and 64 at the most) the conversion isn't hard but there is a definite cognitive overhead to comparing 1/8" vs 5/32" whereas comparing .125" to .15" is an order of magnitude simpler.
  • mpyne 14y ago
    Fractional measures are useful when you often have to sub-divide a thing, but you are right in that they make the problem of comparing two things more difficult. But with that in mind the answer to your question is that when the scales were first devised in the first place that it was apparently more important to be able to evenly split things up easily without grade-school arithmetic than it was to be able to compare a 3/32" socket to a 1/8".
    • ComputerGuru 14y ago
      But why not just use /64 or /32 for everything? 3/32" vs 4/32" is win-win compared to 3/32" vs 1/8" or .09375" vs .125"
      • mpyne 14y ago
        The stupid answer is that it's easier to add 1/2 and 1/4 than it is 32/64 and 16/64. Keep in mind this is the kind of measurement system that might evolve in the time before most people had a formal education.
• jemeshsu 14y ago
  The tech industry has to take the lead by renaming their products: MacBook Pro 33cm, Nexus 18. Using inch for display is a worldwide standard, not just US. It would be strange to look for a 35.5cm notebook or a 100cm HDTV.
  • ciupicri 14y ago
    Maybe in the US. People from other countries want a TV with a diagonal of one meter. It even sounds better because 1 meter is like a barrier unlike 40 inches which is just a number.
• beefman 14y ago
  The metric system? Pff! Sign this petition instead: http://wh.gov/UNMa http://wh.gov/UNMa
• jhales 14y ago
  Another petition which may be more effecitve would be directed at the more rational/scientifically minded people at Google (in as much as they don't have Rick Santorum on their pay roll) to rename nexus 4/7/10 to be in terms of metric units not inches. That would may lead to a very rapid comfort with metric sizes for a large and influential chunk of the population. This would also avoid the potentially unpleasant comparison to those who hope to eradicate Spanish by demand English be the state language.
• teeja 14y ago
  One sure way to get metric passed in the US: tell all the 220-lb ladies that their weight will drop to 100kg.
• beefman 14y ago
  Measuring metric adoption by counting countries with official adoption is common. Less common is measuring by aggregate PPP-GDP and actual adoption by the public. To approximate actual adoption, I give the US, UK, Canada and Jamaica completely to traditional units and the rest of the world completely to metric.* Using 2011 data from the IMF, I then conclude that traditional units command 31% of usage worldwide. * These are the countries in red on this table http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication#Chronology_and_status_of_conversion_by_country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication#Chronology_and_stat... But a review of the UK article shows that the language "partially complete" is pretty fanciful in describing the current situation in the UK. The story in China is more complex...
• mark-r 14y ago
  One thing I never see mentioned is the awkwardness of the metric names. The older measurements are all one syllable, while their metric replacements are often three or four. mile -> kilometer inch -> centimeter pound -> kilogram The only one that comes out even is ounce -> gram. Obviously it's not a huge impediment since many other countries got past it, but I'm sure it just adds to the discomfort people have with it.
  • eurleif 14y ago
    >The only one that comes out even is ounce -> gram. Gallon -> liter? And most of the extra syllables are because SI uses prefixes, instead of inventing completely different units. I think the verbosity is justified by enhanced understandability.
• lifeguard 14y ago
  OMG, I actually learned the metric system in public school in the 1970s. Then Reagan got elected and canceled it. Now American kids have to get into drugs to learn the metric system.
• gojomo 14y ago
  A bit of helpful contrarianism about how Metric isn't always best: Dan Bently, "Metric Doesn't Work", OSCON 2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdK-Cr1pe30 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdK-Cr1pe30
• pconf 14y ago
  The Metric system would probably be ubiquitous in the US by now if Ronald Reagan had not disbanded the U.S. Metric Board in 1982 and overturned laws encouraging schools to teach kids the metric system.
• el_don_almighty 14y ago
  http://wh.gov/UQye http://wh.gov/UQye Help stop the metric system!
• tippivenus 14y ago
  This is fantastic!! They told me in 2nd grade (1968) that the metric systems was coming in 4 years and we had to learn it. This is great news. Finally I will be able to use those metric socket wrenches I bought. Oh, wait I already do.