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| why is the US not Metric |
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| Tepe:
--- Quote from: KL27x on December 20, 2019, 06:23:53 pm ---Perhaps there are countries where tape measures commonly only have cm on them. --- End quote --- Of course there are :) More commonly they also have mm on them. |
| KL27x:
^Yeah, I know they exist. I wonder if any countries exist where you cannot buy combination tape measures (with those disgusting inches!) at the local hardware store. In case people have not seen inches, I wanted to make it clear they don't roll over at 12. |
| Zero999:
Some of the rulers at school only had cm and mm on them and that was over 20 years ago, so it wouldn't surprise me if there a quite a few people under 40 who are unfamiliar with inches. |
| vk6zgo:
--- Quote from: KL27x on December 20, 2019, 06:23:53 pm ---^Apparently even in France many of their tape measures, today, have inches on them. On a common tape measure, here, the small cm numbers often go only 1-10 and then wrap back to 1. Because 1 cm is only so big, and you can't make them bigger just to get bigger font on there. So when you use the cm side to measure something several decimeters long, you have to find the nearest 10's mark to find where you are. The inch side is way bigger and bolder, and the inches are continuous. The foot marks will be on there, but for many uses we ignore feet. There are no yard marks on our tape measures, at all. Maybe this is the stonecutters doing? Or maybe here, we don't care that much about measuring in cm's. Perhaps there are countries where tape measures commonly only have cm on them. If this is your country, this is an FYI. In case you thought our tape measures changed to feet and yards and the inches started all over. Just cuz they exist doesn't mean we have to use them. Anymore than 19.284 meters would be measured as 1 dekameter, 9 meters, 2 decimeters, 8 centimeters, and 4 millimeters in Australia. ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; vk6zgo --- Quote ---If kilometerage was going to become a common term in Australia, I would think it may have achieved some traction over all these years. It has achieved exactly zero. --- End quote --- This was a bit of a strawman of my own. I already stated this is for car rental contracts and the like. Unless you read car contracts aloud daily, this will never be part of your daily life, no. OTOH, in France, this might be used in daily life the way we use "mileage." Because in French is sounds fine? --- Quote ---It is a false analogy, as units of measurement were never a huge component of our culture. --- End quote --- If you say it and other Australians say it, then it is so. But do you find it curious that French Canada is mostly metric-only? But english-speaking Canada still largely uses imperial in daily life to this day? At least this is what internet research suggests. Admittedly, I haven't been to Canada in many years. The only other English speaking country to be so nearly metric after metrication is perhaps South Africa. And English is only their 4th most common official language. They also did the change a bit authoritarian-like, forbidding the use of many "four letter words" like pint and inch and mile. http://www.theheritageportal.co.za/article/short-history-metrication-movement-south-africa If our government Board of Metric came up with these posters,{/quote} we would think it's cute our government believes it has such authority over us. And if it were attempted to be enforced, we would tell our inching government exactly where to stick the yard, and to mind its own pinting business. --- End quote --- The text of the link didn't say a thing about the accompanying picture, so perhaps you are reading things into it which suit your understanding of the situation. --- Quote --- You also fucked up all your previous sporting records that were rounded to the nearest foot or yard. They can be converted to metric, but they will lose in the translation due to rounding errors. :) Also by changing race course lengths, the times can no longer be compared apples to apples, at all. --- End quote --- Australia, the USA, the UK, Canada, & a lot of other Imperial & ex Imperial countries have been involved in world sports for many years, like the Olympic Games, where the distances, weights etc are all Metric, so there is a large archive showing the performance of athletes from those countries at Metric distances, weights, etc. Looking back, those people who were dominant in Mile races were also dominant at 1500m.(the mile is, "near as dammit" 1609 metres). The same situation held for other distances where the Imperial & Metric distances were close. The 440yd race comes out at a couple of metres longer than 400m The 100yd race is just over 8m shorter than the 100m. . --- Quote --- I haven't been in Canada in a couple decades. My personal experience with watching Youtube: AvE, Matthias Wandel are two of the only Canadians I "know." They both use inches to describe and communicate distances. Quite unapologetically, I would say. Neil from Pask Makes is Australian, and he usually states things in metric and imperial conversion. But he will also sometimes use just imperial. "3/4" plywood," for instance. It's probably just easier to say. There are tons more examples. John Heisz is another Candian that could care less about centimeters. I have never seen english speaking canadian use metric, casually. I think Ireland also accepts metric more than Britain. And there are obvious reasons why this might be the case. (Ireland uses the red circle signs, too, but they put the units under the number; go figure, Ireland of all countries has some common sense). Matthias was one of my inspirations and teachers in learning to build (complex machines with moving parts and requiring high accuracy) with my own hands. As previously stated, I tried both sides of the tape measure before I settled on inches, and I am sure he and others influenced this decision. Now, I didn't take shop classes. I took science classes. I had learned only metric in school. So you could say I learned inches from a Canadian. >:D --- Quote ---Old stock tape measures were pretty much run out of stock (after all, it's not as if people hadn't been warned that Metric measures were coming.) Food packaging is not normally stocked in huge quantity in advance, so the changeover was not hard enough to make that a big problem. --- End quote --- Well in America, stores would still be ordering and stocking and selling customary tools and measures. Heck, they would use metrication as advertisement. "Get your inches here before they're all gone!" There's very little chance our government would successfully ban a silkscreen. In your country, maybe you thought "Inches will be gone, we won't be able to use them." In America we think "things will still exist and need to be measured and cut. As long as my tools are accurate in inches, I don't care if the government doesn't recognize the system. I can still use them. Who's going to stop me? The thought police?" --- End quote --- Nobody was banned from using tools they already had, & it was acknowledged that there would be a lot of stuff still around for years, if not decades. --- Quote --- You are going to ban a silkscreen on a tape measure? Like "no, Inches. Mr. Metric has the patent on tape measures. You're in violation." You're going to go around measuring things, and if they round to the nearest 1/32th of an inch better than the nearest half mm, you will send out the inspectors to see what tools they are using? In Australia, entire businesses switched in sync. Entire districts of butchers, for instance, switched at the same time. For the reason that a holdout who still cut their steak in inches and weighed in lbs would gain unfair advantage in attracting customers. --- End quote --- How? When people shop at the butcher, they just want to buy some meat, take it home, cook it & eat it. They don't give a stuff how you measured it. I assume you meant to put a "?" following your comment above. Otherwise, it reads as an assertion. --- Quote ---In America, we just let our people pursue as much profit as they can and let nature take its course. --- End quote --- Yeah!------Tell that to anyone who wants to install self serve fuel pumps in New Jersey or Oregon. Or anyone who wants to sell alcohol in competition with the State Liquor Stores in Alabama, Idaho, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Utah and Virginia. --- Quote ---Inches seem to be in demand in most english speaking countries. --- Quote ---Any prosecutions were pretty much "naughty, naughty, don't do it again", followed by "a slap on the wrist". Hardly anything that people would "go to the barricades about". --- End quote --- That would not deter Americans. If they made more money, they would continue to do it. If they gain market share and more business/profit, they will take that along with the slap on the wrist. They will brag about it. They will stop when it no longer makes them more money. --- End quote --- Unless they have idiots for customers, they wouldn't make more money. The small amount made by catering to idiots would be swamped by the loss of customers who considered it a stupid stance to take. --- Quote --- For this to occur, the Bureau of Metrication will need to have some teeth. Like the ability to revoke business licenses and to levy fines. Or to disrupt a business for hours or days at a time. --- End quote --- Yes, I can just imagine how the USA would do it. Set up a Department of Metric Security, with armed agents with powers of arrest. Perhaps offenders could be sent to Guantanamo Bay! ;D --- Quote ---Either Australians accepted a more authoritative government in the 60's and 70's. Or Australians actually wanted to ditch inches more than most other English speaking people. I think it's the latter. Australia is a bit of a special snowflake in this aspect. You should be proud of that and not care what we do. Unless you are waiting us to change in order to validate your own choices. --- End quote --- No, do what you like. What annoys us is when you make up silly reasons why Australia Metricated, missing the obvious one----- that it was a good idea. --- Quote --- But... metric is the entire world. Yes, the entire globe uses metric, including US. But do we speak the same? I suppose you have the common language with then entire world in Australia. As soon as you learn a hundred more languages. --- End quote --- The whole idea of Metric, as well as Imperial, is that the units can be read & understood by anyone familiar with the system, no matter what language they speak. --- Quote ---You are accustomed to using metric casually, conversationally, already, so that is a huge advantage. The only people who seem to care that inches still exist and are predominantly used by the english speaking world, other than Australia, is english speaking Europe and Asia. They learned English as a second language. Thousands of words. But they object to 4 of them. Inches, yards, feet, and miles. --- End quote --- Nobody "objects" to the words. We are just bemused by the fact that you continue to cling to the last vestiges of the system they are part of, whilst, over tens of postings, you have gone from "It's too expensive", to "We are already metricated where it matters", to "Australians gave away their heritage", to implications of totalitarianism in the Metrication process", finally, something vaguely to do with internationalism. --- Quote ---We have homegrown metrication fans. They are a small but noisy minority. This is just one of many useless causes that people learn in liberal schools which the underlying common goal of is government funding and increased power of the federal government. --- End quote --- Finally we have "It's the Libruhls!" I'm giving up, this is doing my head in! |
| Tepe:
--- Quote from: KL27x on December 20, 2019, 10:21:26 pm ---^Yeah, I know they exist. I wonder if any countries exist where you cannot buy combination tape measures (with those disgusting inches!) at the local hardware store. In case people have not seen inches, I wanted to make it clear they don't roll over at 12. --- End quote --- I haven't seen any combination tape measures. Folding 2 m sticks with metric on one side and inches on the other can be found here, but they are uncommon. Curiously, even the ones labeled in cm only are called "tommestok" around here, meaning "inchstick"... ;-) |
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