why is the US not Metric

[KL27x]

Well, to him it's "common sense" and "economy of scale." It's basically everywhere and everything.



(So he can't come up with a single example.)

I watched the History Guy's video. It was pretty interesting. But I watched the last 10 minutes pissed off about the bushel example. Of course a bushel of one crop is a different weight from another. The bushel is a unit of volume, duh.

[Cubdriver]

That was my immediate thought as well - different densities will result in different weights.

[KL27x]

The Roman system was a bit more sensible than the American Customary version in volume. Per wikipedia, the congius is 1/8th of a cubic foot. So it was exactly 6" cubed. Just a tad smaller than our gallon at 6.136" cubed. (Of course, the inches are different; per wikipedia, the Roman inch was probably a bit smaller than the modern; Sumerian inch a tad larger than.) But then they naturally went ahead and divided that into sixths to make the sextarius. Maybe sextarius just sounded cool, or maybe it's because this makes 48 sextarius to 1 cubic foot, which is pretty close to 50. Or maybe a sextarius was just the right size for a wine bottle.

[bsfeechannel]

bsfeechannel:

As it has been pointed out repeatedly along this thread, for the common citizen the exact system of units is irrelevant as long as it is standard.

Exactly.  He still hasn't presented a good argument to change highway signage in the U. S.

Yes, I have. The whole economy profits from the reduction of the amount of redundant units to measure the same thing.

What we have works and is a standard. 

What everybody had before metric worked and was a standard, but it was inefficient and had to be phased out.

I'm not seeing economic forces pressuring us to change road signs.

But they're there.

[bsfeechannel]

The Roman system was a bit more sensible than the American Customary version in volume.

Using the same reasoning you'll start to see that the metric system is a lot more sensible than whatever the American Customary can offer.

[Cubdriver]

bsfeechannel:

As it has been pointed out repeatedly along this thread, for the common citizen the exact system of units is irrelevant as long as it is standard.

Exactly.  He still hasn't presented a good argument to change highway signage in the U. S.

Yes, I have. The whole economy profits from the reduction of the amount of redundant units to measure the same thing.

How?  By how much $$?  Note that I'm still talking about road signs.

What we have works and is a standard. 

What everybody had before metric worked and was a standard, but it was inefficient and had to be phased out.

I'm not seeing economic forces pressuring us to change road signs.

But they're there.

Yet you can't clearly articulate them beyond your 'the whole economy benefits' nonsense.  If it made good economic sense, the transition would have happened already.

[KL27x]

bsfeechannel: we are taught all of this in school. Every American since 1970's was taught in metric and has learned all these tricks and knows of every single textbook advantage of metric. If this is you caring about Americans, then thanks for the concern. We will feel your prayers.

But if you're in Disneyland, and the map is in Mickey Miles, what's wrong with using Mickey Miles? If you are completely aware of the benefits you are theoretically giving up, determine that none of them really applies to your daily life, and you have no problem using metric if and when you want (and how you want, using fractions with metric and/or metricizing imperial by sticking with a single base unit for an entire calculation no matter how big the numbers get) then what's the problem, really? Esp now that we have calculators and smart phones? (And zeros and scientific notation).

Your compatriots' ideas about saving money have all been addressed, already. You keep coming back to that idea without bringing anything new. If you disagree with either of these statements, then go ahead and refresh my memory. I would appreciate that.

;;
A sextarius measured in modern inches is about 589.934304 mL, which is 19.94805194805 modern oz.

Using wikipedia's best guess of a Roman inch as 0.9708 modern inches, makes it 539.7503761 mL, or 18.251131470774 modern oz.

So maybe I was wrong about the wine bottle. This sounds more like a British pint of beer. Adjusted for
average BMI. And ~18 fl oz is a pretty common size of a draft beer in America. Well, it can be anything from little as ~12-13 oz at a ball game and up to 22 oz, depending on how close you get to a university.

A sextarius based on the modern gallon would be 21 1/3 fl oz. So the "American sextarius" is a Colt 45. 22oz of malt liquor. Sometimes called a "double deuce" by high school kids and homeless people. Fits a brown paper bag just right. This BMI thing is hitting too close to home, now. I prefer to calculate it the Roman way, to make it 19.95 oz, or a Brit pint.

The other interesting thing about the sextarius is it's 36 cubic inches. This is easily divisible a lot of ways without ending up with fractions. Notably, it is divisible by 12, which the Sumerians seemed to like. If you divided a congius into 8ths, you get 27 cubic inches. Going the other way, there are 48 sextaria in a cubic foot, and 48 is divisible by 12; 64 is not. Perhaps the Sumerians found it useful to have these divisible by 12 type of units, because they were proficient traders. Dealing with high volumes of things carried on camels and boats, they may have liked to carry and to trade for the correct number of identically packaged goods in order to bundle or stow them, efficiently, and/or to visually estimate the amount of stuff they can get into the boat. And perhaps multiples of 12 happen to be particularly flexible and efficient in some aspects of the real world logistics of packaging/storing things. Like soda comes in 6 packs, 12 packs, 24 packs. No 5 or 7 packs. Like your metric butter is sold in 1/4 kilo's. Because 4 sticks fit in a box. But apply that to pallets of goods being loaded at the dock.

Dividing the 1/8th cubic foot into 8ths also ends up with only 13.7 oz, using Roman inches. 14.96 using modern inches. That's a bit shy of a proper draft, even in America. 


This gallon vs congius disparity is evidence that mankind may have temporarily forgotten that the gallon and the inch were related, sometime back. I blame the Brits for this. They were living in straw huts covered in dung when the Romans arrived to mine their gold. And they went back to living in mud huts after the gold ran out and the Romans left. But those brits possibly developed an appreciation for and an uncanny calibration to the size of a Roman beer.

Come to think of it, one of the first things I read in my 20 seconds of google research was Sumerians liked their beer. To a less advanced society, buying and drinking imported Sumerian or Roman beer would have been a curiosity. And the containers would have been way more consistently produced than anything they had seen in their lives. Some of the empty bottles may have lived on as measuring tools. Beer. We have inches because beer.

Ah, hmm? wikipedia: Pint comes from the Old French word pinte and perhaps ultimately from Vulgar Latin pincta meaning "painted", for marks painted on the side of a container to show capacity.

[tooki]

bsfeechannel:

As it has been pointed out repeatedly along this thread, for the common citizen the exact system of units is irrelevant as long as it is standard.

Exactly.  He still hasn't presented a good argument to change highway signage in the U. S.  What we have works and is a standard.  I'm not seeing economic forces pressuring us to change road signs.

-Pat

Yeah, he seems to think that there’s a massive road sign factory somewhere making all the signs for the whole world, which are obviously standardized worldwide, except for USA. 😂

I mean, in USA, the signs are often made by prisoners, so their cost is close to zero. What he doesn’t understand is that it’s not the signs themselves that cost a lot of money, but the labor to install them. A clean switchover (which is mandatory, at least within a specific road) means putting up the new signs, but keeping them covered, and then quickly uncovering the new ones and covering the old ones. (Look for documentaries of when Sweden switched from driving on the left to the right to see how this works.) So the cost is immense, since you’re driving new signposts, potentially building trusses for road signs, etc. The cost of the sign itself becomes trivial at that point. So even if economies of scale applied, which they don’t since each country makes their own signs anyway, it wouldn’t make any difference.

[tooki]

bsfeechannel:

As it has been pointed out repeatedly along this thread, for the common citizen the exact system of units is irrelevant as long as it is standard.

Exactly.  He still hasn't presented a good argument to change highway signage in the U. S.

Yes, I have. The whole economy profits from the reduction of the amount of redundant units to measure the same thing.

No, it won’t. That’s dogma, not actually a justification. Since the US economy already has support for customary units, eliminating them would only create costs. And even if the US went all-metric in everything from tomorrow on, it’d still have to support legacy units for repair and maintenance of existing installed base, meaning no savings. (If anything, added cost due to needing to support both, whereas before, one system often sufficed.)

Can you just stop this dog and pony show and stop pretending that you have any justification beyond personal preference? We have disproven your cockamamie explanations time and time again. Be honest to yourself and to us that this is just your own strong personal preference, nothing more.


Earlier in this thread, you expressed concern that you might become a “metric rjstofer”. Well, not only did you accomplish that, you’ve managed to outdo him by a wide margin. You sound like a religious zealot trying to prove creationism: by ignoring facts and evidence and then twisting other facts and evidence to support an indefensible position.

[KL27x]

McMaster-Carr must sell different stuff to metric countries, I take it?

Aside from metric twist drills, which can be purchased online at many places, McMaster-Carr seems to be the easiest place to find metric stuff, here.

Forstner bits:
They have a whopping two metric forstner bits, in 26mm and 35mm.

Router bits:
McMaster-Carr carries no router bits with metric shanks, at all.

Hole saws: McMaster has like 9 different categories of hole saws. Pages of them. They only have metric sizes in a single category of hole saw. 8 sizes in 5mm increments. All of the others are imperial, only. Including the masonry and steel cutting hole saws.

Dowels/rounds/tubes: metric is only an option on the mild steel rounds. All of the other categories of steel tubes/rounds, like the "tight-tolerance" and "chrome plated" are in imperial, only. Wood dowels are 100% imperial sizes, only.

Making holes for metric bearings is fun, here. It can take a bit of tweaking to get them to fit, unless you have a mill or buy the proper reamer.

Machine shops are increasingly going metric. But Jack and Jenny would have to be retarded to try to go full metric in their garage fabrication and wood shops.

[tooki]

I don't get the impression that McMaster-Carr sells much outside of USA, as evidenced by their lack of any international websites at all, and absolutely barebones international shipping info. (Contrast that with Mouser, Digi-Key, etc.) So no, I don't think they sell different stuff to metric countries. People buying metric will be buying from their local equivalents, not from McM-C.

[donkey77]

Just had an example today. My dad called up, having an issue with the new waste disposal unit he was trying to fit to his kitchen sink. He'd bought it from Screwfix, a big chain of tool/diy stores in the UK, but couldn't get his waste pipe to fit. I looked up the model, which is made in the states, and their website states it needs a 1 1/2 inch waste pipe. I looked at all the main material suppliers that are open on Sunday's and they do 40mm pipe, the standard here. Unfortunately this doesn't fit as it needs to be 38.1 mm. Apparently you can get inch and a half pipe but from specialist suppliers, the type the trade use and not open weekend's. I've no problem with different units of measurement but surprised if the part is destined for a metric country (and for bfsee's info we are far from completely metric here) that the fitting for the waste pipe, which is separately screwed to the main body, would be for 40mm.

[CatalinaWOW]

Just had an example today. My dad called up, having an issue with the new waste disposal unit he was trying to fit to his kitchen sink. He'd bought it from Screwfix, a big chain of tool/diy stores in the UK, but couldn't get his waste pipe to fit. I looked up the model, which is made in the states, and their website states it needs a 1 1/2 inch waste pipe. I looked at all the main material suppliers that are open on Sunday's and they do 40mm pipe, the standard here. Unfortunately this doesn't fit as it needs to be 38.1 mm. Apparently you can get inch and a half pipe but from specialist suppliers, the type the trade use and not open weekend's. I've no problem with different units of measurement but surprised if the part is destined for a metric country (and for bfsee's info we are far from completely metric here) that the fitting for the waste pipe, which is separately screwed to the main body, would be for 40mm.

I'm surprised too, but everyone makes mistakes from time to time.  Transitions are always painful, in spite of what bfees thinks.  Your tradesman suppliers may carry 1 1/2 in pipe, and I am sure they did for a while.  They may also have reached the point where they only carry adapters which leads to a different kind of pain since there isn't always room to make the transitions.

[KL27x]

It's surprising that US makes this stuff to export to UK, lol. Sure it isn't made in China for US company?

I've no problem with different units of measurement but surprised if the part is destined for a metric country

Screwfix probably carries it for a reason?  Maybe there's still a demand for these for older homes, or such? And perhaps some people buy this model by mistake. Perhaps helped by the typical store employee? +1 to CatalinaWOW, this is just one of many things to look forward to for 80+ years after a forced transition. Maybe the UK could have just switched from 1 1/2" pipe to 38mm pipe? 

Aside: I find it pretty amazing that some teenagers in UK don't know what lbs or inches are, anymore. I would think they still teach this in school and still have inches and lbs on rulers and scales along with the metric.

Tooki, cool thing about Sweden's transition from Left to Right? Swedes were apparently already driving RHD cars with the steering wheel on the left side, close to 90%. And even then they still didn't want to change to driving on the right hand side.

[tooki]

Yep, weird huh? :p

I wonder if their collision patterns were any different, with the drivers by the curb side instead of the center side of the road?

[vk6zgo]

It's surprising that US makes this stuff to export to UK, lol. Sure it isn't made in China for US company?

I've no problem with different units of measurement but surprised if the part is destined for a metric country

Screwfix probably carries it for a reason?  Maybe there's still a demand for these for older homes, or such? And perhaps some people buy this model by mistake. Perhaps helped by the typical store employee? +1 to CatalinaWOW, this is just one of many things to look forward to for 80+ years after a forced transition. Maybe the UK could have just switched from 1 1/2" pipe to 38mm pipe? 

Aside: I find it pretty amazing that some teenagers in UK don't know what lbs or inches are, anymore. I would think they still teach this in school and still have inches and lbs on rulers and scales along with the metric.

Tooki, cool thing about Sweden's transition from Left to Right? Swedes were apparently already driving RHD cars, close to 90%. And even then they still didn't want to change to driving on the right hand side.

 RHD means vehicles where the driver sits on the right hand side of the vehicle.
The correct term for the placement of vehicles on the road is "Left Hand Traffic" or "Right Hand Traffic".
The Swedish cars were already mostly LHD.(see Wiki)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-_and_right-hand_traffic

[KL27x]

^Thanks. Corrected.

Swedes be like "just gimme any car, and now leave me alone."

[SilverSolder]

I was in Sweden when they switched...  I remember the city buses had the doors "boarded up" on the one side, and new doors installed on the other...

[boffin]

Our biggest export is air travel planes, which the fasteners and the ATC are imperial.

No, they're not.  Since the 80s, the FMS systems in Boeing aircraft use kg of fuel, not lbs. (see ACA143)
Plenty has switched over, and more is going.

The fact that the US refuses to switch is pure stubbornness

[KL27x]

No, they're not.  Since the 80s, the FMS systems in Boeing aircraft use kg of fuel, not lbs. (see ACA143)
Plenty has switched over, and more is going.

The bolts are all imperial. The Air Traffic Control uses feet and nautical miles.

The fact that the US refuses to switch is pure stubbornness

You don't know what stubbornness means, do you? Walk to the nearest mirror and look directly into it.

[KL27x]

Changing road signs or whatnot might be a useful ploy if and when needed to temporarily distract Americans  from more important issues. To borrow more money from China and pour it directly into the pockets of America's overprivileged working class so they can make 5x the money they could make in any other job they are qualified for. In exchange for riding around in a truck and standing in a crane bucket with a drill while wearing a reflective jacket and hard hat. This gesture of solidarity with the rest of the world will of course be thrilling to Bank of China. Foxconn workers are jumping out of windows for $2 an hour so that American high school dropouts can make lawyer money for sitting in a truck and driving around.

[SilverSolder]

Changing road signs or whatnot might be a useful ploy if and when needed to temporarily distract Americans  from more important issues. To borrow more money from China and pour it directly into the pockets of America's overprivileged working class so they can make 5x the money they could make in any other job they are qualified for. In exchange for riding around in a truck and standing in a crane bucket with a drill while wearing a reflective jacket and hard hat. This gesture of solidarity with the rest of the world will of course be thrilling to Bank of China. Foxconn workers are jumping out of windows for $2 an hour so that American high school dropouts can make lawyer money for sitting in a truck and driving around.

Seems a little harsh on all the hard working Americans I have had the pleasure of meeting...

[SeanB]

Funny thing is in a metric country ( South Africa) I still can get a limited range of Imperial and US fasteners, often very cheap, as old stock dating back from the 1970's, a while after South Africa went metric.  Only used for USA designed equipment, which uses those cursed fasteners of odd ( to the metric world) sizes, thread pitches and fastener heads. Limited range of the actual fasteners as well, but there are enough taps, dies and insert kits around for use, though I often just go and replace the fastener with the metric version where possible, or if I have to put in an insert (stripped thread) it will in general be metric, unless I actually have the correct imperial size already.

Only common imperial size is 1/4 UNC, which is the thread used on cameras, so I actually have the die nuts, the fasteners and the right size drills for them, from installing and using CCTV cameras. Even there a lot of the newer cameras come with a M6 thread, so you need to keep a set of M6 cap head screws around for those, and eventually all those older cameras will be gone.

[KL27x]

For every one of these Americans you have met, there are 20 people in Asia slaving away so these wonderful Americans can collect their disability and unemployment and their prescription benzos and opioids. I'm an American. I can be honest about it.

At least when we created the TSA, we can hand out mere $14/hr jobs to Americans to sit in a chair and walk around in a uniform with absolutely zero qualifications and skills. To change road signs will require hazardous duty pay and workman's comp payouts for the Larry and Curly's that decapitate their coworkers by moving the crane the wrong direction while Moe is standing in front of a sign 50 feet over our freeways.

How many Americans does it take to change a lightbulb? Depends how good their union is. You want to know how much it could possibly cost to change a road sign? American (and America's lawyers): hold my beer. I have a record to break.

[SilverSolder]

For every one of these Americans you have met, there are 20 people in Asia slaving away so these wonderful Americans can collect their disability and unemployment and their prescription benzos and opioids. [...]

Who do you think is happier...  a hard working person, or an obese person rotting in front of a 60 inch TV on schedule II drugs issued by the medical-industrial complex?

My heart felt sympathy goes to the latter, frankly...