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why is the US not Metric

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IanJ:

--- Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on October 25, 2019, 02:44:29 pm ---
--- Quote from: NivagSwerdna on October 25, 2019, 10:47:03 am ---In the UK we still have road distances and speed limits in miles despite having most other things in SI units... strange really.
... and when it is really hot the tabloid papers say... "Oooo what a scorcher <big number>F"... I seriously doubt many people understand F in the UK now... not me anyway.  :)

--- End quote ---

At least in the US we're all Imperial. The UK has a bastardized mix--like you said, road distances and speed limits in miles/MPH, temperatures in C. Food weights in grams, but people weight in stone (talk about a bizarre unit). Drinks in pints (and not even the same pint we have in the US).

--- End quote ---

In the UK I think it's a good mix of good workable units and keeping some sort of heritage going.
MPH, miles, degC, grammes, stones, pints, millimetres, centimetres...........all good.

Ian

Tepe:

--- Quote from: IanJ on November 06, 2019, 12:21:55 pm ---In the UK I think it's a good mix of good workable units and keeping some sort of heritage going.
MPH, miles, degC, grammes, stones, pints, millimetres, centimetres...........all good.

--- End quote ---
still weird and half-hearted, though  ;D

vk6zgo:

--- Quote from: bsfeechannel on November 06, 2019, 12:25:24 am ---This kind of adaptation was done all over the world. You find sewage pipes in 25, 50, 100, 150mm. What are those? The old 1, 2, 4 and 5 inches.

--- End quote ---
Some pipe dimensions are ID, some are OD, & some don't make any sense in either system.

--- Quote ---I have two oscilloscope CRTs. One is a Toshiba I.130BHB31 and the other is an El-Menco 5DEP1. 130mm, 5 inches. They are electrically and dimensionally equivalent.

When I was a kid we used to have 30cm rulers. Just shy of 1 foot. My Faber-Castell 52/82 slide rule has numbers spaced on the L scale by 2.5 cm. A standard door is 2.10m x 90cm = 7 x 3 feet. Pine wood planks can be found in 30 x 60, 90, 120, 150 or 180 cm, respectively 1 x 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 feet.

The world saw metric and didn't blink twice.

--- End quote ---

Back in the day, when most Oscilloscopes in Australia were made either in this country or the UK, the graticules were drawn with centimetre spacings.
The various settings were popularly known as "volts/cm" & "time/cm".

Remember, this was way back, deep in the real "Imperial" measurement days!

When most Oscilloscopes were from the USA, with different, (but fairly similar) spacings, it became "volts/div" & "time/div".

vk6zgo:

--- Quote from: KL27x on November 04, 2019, 11:17:25 pm ---
--- Quote ---Man, why so melodramatic? Is the US adhering to a global standard that has been proved to work better than all the previous versions a token of resignation?

Come on! You should celebrate.
--- End quote ---
:-//
Erm, no. First off, you read to much into "take a knee." It's not a matter of pride to me. I could give a shit.

Changing the definition of an inch from "that piece of metal" kept in a dark safe at a specific temperature and humidity in our department of national weights and measures to being a derivative of cm has nothing to do with metric being better or worse.

--- End quote ---
It won't be a "derivative of cm"-----in the S.I.system, the cm is a "deprecated unit", so the inch would probably be expressed in mm.

--- Quote ---If you want a tomato to be a tomato no matter what country, you have to choose one or the other to be the standard. Aside from having more traction, the thing that is nice about metric is how it is "calibrated." If you get into a squabble with someone else over what a kg actually is, you could theoretically actually do the measurements rather than have to take the word of the guy that has "that piece of metal."

Once you've agreed on that, you ought not care if some other people prefer to express height on a drivers license as 1.49 meter, or 14.9 decimeters, or 149 cm.

--- End quote ---
Again, the SI system wouldn't like any of  those options, but would  prefer the height be 1490mm.
Common usage (& sense) has settled upon 149 cm, but I would personally prefer 1.49 metres.

--- Quote ---Or feet, or inches or hands. As long as the conversion has been defined, and the calibration is from the same standard. This standard which we've all agree upon is derived from the earth, which we all have equal access to.
--- End quote ---
Pray tell!
The metre used to be defined as a fraction of the circumference of the Earth at the Equatot, but that changed many years ago.

--- Quote ---You think we won't need to know how to use ratios and do conversions, anymore, if we convince stupid Americans to convert to the "superior" metric system?

The reason imperial will take centuries more to die out, if it ever does, is because it's not a big deal. Other than a few exceptions, say brit pints vs US pints, imperial has all its hens in order, and has had them that way since centuries before metric was even born.
--- End quote ---

The US "customary" measurement system (which is from about the same era as the original Metric system), maybe, but the Imperial system in a wider sense is nightmarish, with such delights as "Chains" ( there are 22 "links"in a chain), or "Furlongs", or the one with three names ("Rod", "Pole"or "Perch"), or the "Stone(14 lbs) or "the"hundredweight" (112 lbs)!
All leaving out the ones which it has in common with the US system, like "Troy ounces" & "Nautical Miles"

--- Quote --- If there were many kinds of imperial (and/or other alternatives) measurements, then it would be a bigger deal. The reason France invented metric and europe adopted it is because they were living with hundreds of different competing standards, at the time.

--- End quote ---

The units I have mentioned are exactly that, "many types of Imperial".

The US customary system was, in its day, a brave effort to cut through the dross the Imperal system had accumulated over the centuries, but it didn't go far enough.

A misstep was to  choose the gallon quantity used in the British brewing industry, instead of the water one!
I'm starting to see a common thread here---- the Sydney colony in Oz had a "Rum Rebellion"
Maybe the Brits thought that they could control their fractious colonists by keeping them drunk! ;D

vk6zgo:

--- Quote from: wraper on November 06, 2019, 12:05:56 pm ---
--- Quote from: KL27x on November 04, 2019, 08:21:20 pm ---America didn't choose imperial. We were handed it by the Brits. I wouldn't say we actively choose to keep it. We just don't have incentive to change it officially/completely. We already took the knee to the rest of the world by changing all of our units of measurement to be defined by global (metric) standard. Why should anyone in another country care, beyond that?

--- End quote ---
Because you are exporting this shit. Both in hardware and IP. Those effing imperial screws used in some equipment I service are driving me nuts.

--- End quote ---
They always have, even in "Imperial" countries because the US "customary" ones aren't compatible with the common small screws used in those countries.

Of course, the same applied to 3mm Metric screws from Germany & Japan in the old days.
The Germans  used a fine thread, the Japanese, a coarse one!

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