General > General Technical Chat
why is the US not Metric
bsfeechannel:
--- Quote from: KL27x on January 07, 2020, 07:19:58 pm ---not only, but mostly.
Starting with France, revolution.
Russia-cum-USSR (basically this includes east europe): 8 years after the Bolshevik revolution.
Germany: Napolean.
Poland: nuff said.
China: during Beiyang under martial law
Japan: Meiji revolution
--- End quote ---
All those countries were rejecting a feudal past and moving to a new paradigm of modern, industrialized state influenced by Western scientific, technological, philosophical, political, legal, and aesthetic ideas. The same motivation behind the US's revolution of independence.
So, metrication is not the result of political and cultural upheaval. It is a consequence of the motivation to be modern.
bsfeechannel:
--- Quote from: vwestlife on January 07, 2020, 03:50:22 pm ---
--- Quote from: bsfeechannel on January 07, 2020, 03:33:50 am ---And this argument has been equally debunked ad nauseam in this thread. The US "gone metric where it makes sense" only defeats the purpose of metrication, which is to reduce the clutter and confusion of units.
--- End quote ---
That's like saying Canada has "clutter and confusion" of languages because they are a bilingual country.
--- End quote ---
You could say that. However, you can't compare languages to system of units. Systems of units are objective, not subjective.
If you wake up tomorrow and suddenly realize that the speedometer in your car and the signs on the road are metric, you won't be less American than you are today. If you remove the words inches, feet or miles from every day use and now use millimeters, meters and kilometers, this won't make you less a speaker of English.
KL27x:
The way the S. Koreans use metric to replicate their native units is the same game that America's MIC plays. The American government officially uses metric for (almost) all of their business with private companies, by that metrication law we had. Military uses metric, too. Mechanical drawings of parts are done in metric, but to standard USC dimensions, in many cases. So instead of 5" OD, the Sparrow missle body is spec'd as a 127mm OD.
This might sound like a dick move, but this means the manufacturers can stock fewer pre-formed or partly processed materials (round, tubes, bars, etc, and even perhaps further processing) to manufacture a wider array of things, including older designs still in production. It also could be that in some cases, things fit existing hardware or whatnot. This is an entire supply chain going back through various tooling down to extrusion dies which obviously can't be adjusted and to the American steel industry. The more parts you need to make, the more tooling you need to maintain, and/or to be dependent on outside sources.
Same applies to any domestic manufacturing, of course. The raw materials will be cheaper in stock imperial sizes. Waiting for these toolings to wear out and then replace with metric just means you'll be stuck maintaining both for practically ever, and complicating your supply chain between molten steel and engineering materials?
Oh, and bsfeechannel? You're not a very good reader. Not a very good PR cheerleader for your cause, either, IMO. I think I understand your POV, but your methodology of... say, promoting your views? I guess I have to pass on w/e you are smoking. I wouldn't willingly join that wavelength. But good luck on your crusade. And I apologize for being rude. :-+ Cheers.
bsfeechannel:
--- Quote from: KL27x on January 08, 2020, 06:29:11 am ---Oh, and bsfeechannel? You're not a very good reader. Not a very good PR cheerleader for your cause, either, IMO. I think I understand your POV, but your methodology of... say, promoting your views? I guess I have to pass on w/e you are smoking. I wouldn't willingly join that wavelength. But good luck on your crusade. And I apologize for being rude. :-+ Cheers.
--- End quote ---
If I were promoting metric, I'd be saying something like imperial good, metric better.
GlennSprigg:
Back on Page-42, (sorry), TimFox said...
--- Quote from: TimFox on January 06, 2020, 04:04:45 pm ---As I understand the history, the liter was originally defined as 1000 cubic centimeters. The gram was originally defined as the mass of one cubic centimeter of water. The prototype kilogram was then fabricated to agree with that definition. However, due to the temperature dependence of water’s density . . . etc . . .
--- End quote ---
Actually, although these units of mass/size/volume were limited to Water, it goes so far as to
technically specify that it was for Pure Water, at average Sea-Level, and at 21-deg C. :)
On Page-43, vwestlife said...
--- Quote from: vwestlife on January 07, 2020, 08:22:26 pm ---Anybody else remember these? Rulers marked in tenths of an inch, as a stepping stone to Metrication by decimalizing inches. They also tried to make the Metric equivalent easier to remember by rounding it off to "1 inch = 25 mm". (Hey, the Bible says Pi is 3.0, so isn't that close enough?)
--- End quote ---
Sorry, but in THAT regard, there was NO rounding off! It always was, & is, 1" = exactly 2.54cm.
And yea, here in Australia, you can still buy, (in fact the most common), tape-measures with both
metric & imperial. Comes in handy when you know/suspect something old was fabricated in imperial,
so you don't measure something as say 381mm, when it was really 15" etc. Although I would rather
add say 300mm to 450mm, then add 1' 4+15/16" to 1' 11+5/32" (unrelated comparison!) :D
I don't think I ever saw 1/10ths of an inch on a ruler, (and I'm old), but of course measuring in 'Thou'
on an imperial Micrometer was common, & fairly logical. Especially when relating that on Lathe dials!
(Side-Note: Aren't Vernier Calipers a clever invention!! Although now electronically digital)
P.S. I used to piss off an old Carpenter at work, ordering a piece of wood from him, say...
3' 7+5/32" and 274mm. He hated it, made it right! (He knew my humour though). :-+
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