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why is the US not Metric
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Zero999:

--- Quote from: coppercone2 on January 01, 2020, 12:35:35 am ---
--- Quote from: Tepe on January 01, 2020, 12:31:42 am ---Billions of people cope just fine with centimeters and millimeters without being cyborgs.

--- End quote ---

they cope yes

--- End quote ---
And I'm sure there are billions who prefer centimetres and millimetres, over inches. Most imperial rulers are divided up into 1/16 of an inch, which is too big for me. Some rulers are divided up into 1/32 of an inch which is a bit smaller than a millimetre and is a bit too small.
unitedatoms:
Fun fact. The original definition of kilometer is one centigrad of earth equator. One grad is Pi/200. Earth equator was assumed to be 40000 kilometers.

One can verify this by counting fractional grad notches all over the edge of earth disk. :)
ebastler:

--- Quote from: unitedatoms on January 01, 2020, 03:27:46 pm ---Fun fact. The original definition of kilometer is one centigrad of earth equator. One grad is Pi/200. Earth equator was assumed to be 40000 kilometers.

--- End quote ---

Not quite. The chosen reference was a meridian, i.e. a line which is orthogonal to the equator, running from the North pole to the South pole. For convenience, and since this definition was proposed by the French Academy of Sciences, the meridian through Paris was selected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre#Meridional_definition

Not sure whether centigrads figured in the discussion -- were they already a thing in 1790? I understand that a quarter of the meridian was chosen as the length reference (North pole to equator via Paris), and the meter defined as being the 10-millionth part of that distance.

Edit: Seems that the "centrigrade" or "gradian" scale indeed stems from France and the time of the French revolution as well. So it's quite plausible that the new (back then) definition of the meter and the proposed 400-grad scale were connected.
KL27x:
^ It would appear that someone in France wanted to make everything into 10's and 100's.

If that had caught on, we would be making right angles of 100 degrees/grads (a hectodegree?). Triangles would have 200 degrees/grads. Circles and polygons would add up to 400 degrees/grads.

A 45 degree angle would be 50. Considering the ubiquity of 30 and 60 degree angles in design and engineering and construction, these would now be 33.333 and 66.667 degrees.

An about-face or complete change in viewpoint/stance would be doing "a 200."   :-DD 
In this base ten utopia, "K" and "100" could be applied and used to mean every other thing imaginable.

Zero999:

--- Quote ---And I'm sure there are billions who prefer centimetres and millimetres, over inches. Most imperial rulers are divided up into 1/16 of an inch, which is too big for me. Some rulers are divided up into 1/32 of an inch which is a bit smaller than a millimetre and is a bit too small.
--- End quote ---
That's funny, because in metric, the unit sizes make jumps by 10x, rather than 2x when dividing an inch into 2^-1 fractions. So if you like to use some unit that is say, about 3x as big as a centimeter, you might as well use the word inch. If you wanted something about a third the length of a meter, you might as well use a foot. Since they are already well defined. Esp if your country, which is the size of the entire EU, already uses them, consistently, as is the case for the US.

Edit: I respect your preference for a tape measure marking every 39.4 thous as being better than 31.25 thou or 62.5 thous, but it seems a tad curious and arbitrary unless you include the fact it is part of the larger system of metric.

Interesting thought I discovered out of this thread. Of the native english speaking world, the US, alone, counts for near 3/4 of that figure. 2 billion people speak English. 400 million speak it as their first or lone language. About 300 million of these folks live in the US. The majority of english speakers around the world perhaps don't have much exposure to imperial units other than through media. Living in it is a different perspective, and it isn't even a thing to notice. Metric is just as useful to Americans, even if we don't feel an urgent need to buy butter in grams or to drive in km/h.

Centimeters. Made by man in order to divide a circle into 400 degree. And so we can have these beauties:
https://www.123rf.com/photo_97469762_yellow-metric-measuring-tape-isolated-on-white-background.html

So if you are ok with stopping short on the grand Belgian plan and leaving 360 degrees in a circle, that's kinda how Americans feel about changing road signs and our daily parlance to metric. Yeah, that sounds nice. Just not for us.
bsfeechannel:
Well, the holidays are over. I hope you have had an awesome Metric Christmas and New Year's Day.

I had the Metrickest Christmas anyone could desire. At the dinner our host served this wine called Km. 0.



Here's a picture of the actual bottle back label.



And a nice review about it.

It has this name because the producers', Familia Irurtia (Irurtia Family), vineyard is located at the origin of the Rio de la Plata (Plata River). In fact the front label exhibits a map with their location (golden little circle at the left of "Cabernet Sauvignon") showing the river and its tributaries in black, part of Argentina in gray, and Uruguay in white.

I recommend this wine to anyone who resists metrication. All the 750 ml of it.
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