Why the U.S. doesn't use the metric system

Tom_Tom · 2018-12-05T19:19:03.000Z

Lightbringer:

Anyhoo, one thing that right from the beginning scared people off The Metric System™ is the way it was alllllllllllways portrayed in the media. Eg,

“The Monument was over 15 feet (4.572 meters) tall.”

So, 15’ someone can eyeball, but wtf’s 4.572m?? Let me get out my abacus and try to figure it out…

All that unnecessary “precision” scared off people.

They thought that instead of ordering a half-pound of cheese from the deli, they’d be forced to buy… wait, whut’s half of 454g?.. hang on a sec… carry the one… no, wait… damn, this metric system is so f’n complicated!!… ARRRGH!!! forget it, gimme a jar of Velveeta instead.

So we’re still stuck with furlongs and fortnights.

That’s actually close to the height of a UK double-decker bus, or a double deck HGV. Which I can visualise. As well as the length of a cricket pitch or football field, or an acre. But can’t really estimate area in hectares.

Some cheeky retailers tried to “rationalise” the weight of e.g. a “pound” of sausages, or jam, down to 400 grams (at the same price), but that was easily found out. There was even legislation to ban the use of old units in trading, but a popular movement rose up, and the law was changed back, so you can still buy e.g. a stone of potatoes (though the scales used may only be calibrated in metric units, if they are to be legal for trade). Otherwise we buy them by the sack.

AEC Routemaster
Length 27 ft 6 in (8.38 m) 30 ft 0 in (9.14 m)
Width 8 ft (2.44 m)
Height 14 ft 4 1⁄2 in (4.38 m)
Curb weight 7.35 long tons (7.47 t; 8.23 short tons)

With a platform on the back, just a pole to hang onto, no door, hop on and off even in motion if it suited you better than waiting for the stop, pay the conductor (yes buses had conductors, not just drivers), safety elves not invited.

In rural areas we can still hail passing buses, and ask the driver to drop us off where we want. And it’s all free for those old enough to receive their bus passes (not sure I’m going to last that long).

Farthings, halfpennies, threepenny bits, sixpences, shillings, half crowns, ten bob notes, sovereigns, guineas etc. are the proper way to count money IMO, and any shop assistant used to be able to count change mentally without having to see it calculated on their till.

The guinea is an interesting one, still used by gentlemen. And some rogues.

Game Hunter – 29 Jul 19

Why Are Horses Sold In Guineas? Find Out The Real Reason

Horse racing has changed over the centuries but it still retains many antiquated traditions including the sale of horses using Guineas. Find out why.

When we decimalised currency, a lot of “rounding up” and price gouging went on in the confusion. Just as happened when the Euro was introduced (fortunately we dodged that bullet).

Britain is almost uniquely blessed with a road network designed for the double decker bus, but those pesky Continentals proposed to ban our tall HGVs, since they themselves can only accommodate up to 4 metre tall transport, and don’t like the competitive advantage that our freight haulage industry has over their puny trucks.

http://www2.hw.ac.uk/sml/downloads/logisticsresearchcentre/BritainwithoutDouble-deckLorries(finalreport).pdf

Currently in a “Fog in Channel, Continent cut off” type of meltdown :cry:

In engineering there can also be confusion between the micron, and the mil, which can lead to some interesting errors of scale.

Though my favourite military marching compass is is calibrated in a different type of mil, (the mili radian, but slightly approximated for ease of mental arithmetic) which makes gunnery calculations much easier. As well as my riflescopes, with their mil dots.

Actually, in shooting, metric stuff doesn’t work. Imperial units just fit nicely. Weight in grains, distances in yards, speed in feet per second, etc.

arek98 · 2018-12-05T19:40:38.000Z

Right, US units need a fix.
I moved 19 years ago from Europe to US and still don’t get many of them.

Football field being a unit of length and surface. Often things are described as x football fields long, or x football fields area.

Lumber, for example 2x4 (two-by-four supposedly inches) is 1.5 in x 3.5 in, 2x10 is 1.5 in x 9.25 in. Even the same with some shelves, you but 12 in wide shelf only to find out it is actually 11.5. Take a measuring tape every time you want to buy something, sigh…

Tally-ho · 2018-12-05T19:59:49.000Z

MtnDon · 2018-12-05T20:07:18.000Z

Tally-ho:

I like that

Lightbringer · 2018-12-05T20:21:29.000Z

Tom Tom:

Some cheeky retailers tried to “rationalise” the weight of e.g. a “pound” of sausages, or jam, down to 400 grams (at the same price), but that was easily found out.

Well, here they just put less and less into the same-sized container and call it a day.

Cans of ground coffee used to always be 16oz, packed tightly. Open the can, try to get the included plastic scoop, and you’ll never be able to put the lid back on unless you use 2 scoops or more.

Then, they went to 14oz coffee in a 16oz can. Open it, and it’s packed loosely so that you could take out the scoop (currently no longer included) and replace the lid… easily.

Then, only 13oz in a can.

Then, only 12oz in a can.

Then 11oz.

Now, you could find as little as 10¾oz. (Maybe less, as I haven’t looked that closely anymore, for fear of being made ill.)

Soon, they’ll be shipping empty cans that just smell like coffee when you open them.

Yogurt? 8oz was the standard-sized container. Then some genius (not being snarky) thought up “whips”, ie, froth up the yogurt so that you can stick only 6oz by weight into the same 8oz cup.

Soon, 6oz became the new “standard” cup.

And now, only 4oz! Damn, that’s great for dieters. Have “a cup of yogurt” and only eat half of what you used to eat.

Paper towels? Used to be, you couldn’t even stick a regular roll into a wall-hanging rack, not ’til you used maybe half the roll. Now, that half-gone size is the norm, and anything with more paper on it is called a “bonus roll” or similar.

Oh, I could go on, and on, and on, about the built-in “portion control” they’re imposing on what used to be standard size containers. No need to sell 10oz of coffee in a nominal “1lb can” or any such trickery, they just shrink the contents and have the weight right there in microprint.

MtnDon · 2018-12-05T20:35:43.000Z

That has nothing to do with the system of measurement. That has all to do with Greed. Greed is pretty much universal though perhaps more noticeable when large corporations are running the show. It does pay to be able to read and do math.

Lexel · 2018-12-05T21:07:10.000Z

and NASA lost at least 2 times a space crafts because of wrong translation to metric unit system when calculation course

Henk4U2 · 2018-12-05T21:15:08.000Z

@Tally-ho. Nice picture. I have been raised a science-type all my life. Math, chem, physics.
And yet, as I am lookin at your (clarifying) picture, I get the strange urge to say.

US: 1 mile = 8 furlongs = 80 chains = 1,760 yard = 5,280 feet = 63,360 inch. That is adventure.
SI: 1 km = 1,000 m = 1,000,000 mm = 1,000,000,000 µm. Admitting it is much easier, but also a bit boring.

Old habits die hard, there are still Dutch (wo)men who use “pond” and “ons” (0,500 kilo resp. 0,100 kilo).

hank · 2018-12-05T21:20:08.000Z

Yep

Nov. 10, 1999: A disaster investigation board reports that NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter burned up in the Martian atmosphere because engineers failed to convert units from English to metric.

Nov. 10, 1999: Metric Math Mistake Muffed Mars Meteorology Mission | WIRED

MtnDon · 2018-12-05T21:32:44.000Z

Lexel:

……wrong translation to metric unit system……

Reminds me of the “Gimli Glider” situation; Air Canada, 1983 Right near where I was living at the time.

en.wikipedia.org

Gimli Glider

Air Canada Flight 143, commonly known as the Gimli Glider, was a Canadian scheduled domestic passenger flight between Montreal and Edmonton that ran out of fuel on Saturday, July 23, 1983, at an altitude of 41,000 feet (12,500 m), midway through the flight. The flight crew successfully glided the Boeing 767 to an emergency landing at a former Royal Canadian Air Force base in Gimli, Manitoba, which had been converted to a racetrack, Gimli Motorsports Park. It resulted in no serio The incident w...

TheIntruder · 2018-12-05T22:43:47.000Z

e1000:

Serious question, are all passenger car wheels around the world measured in inches? I genuinely want to know.

Effectively, yes. Michelin introduced a new tire/wheel system with a bead design to better cope with the advent of lower profile tires in the 70s, with the TRX tires and TR rims that had metric diameters (i.e. 190/65-390). It was utilized by a handful of OEMs, mostly for sports cars, but nothing beyond that, and it fizzled out.

Lightbringer:

Worse than you imagine… eg, a 225/60/14 tire has a tread-width of 225mm, an aspect ratio of 60% (sidewall ÷ width), all on a 14” rim.

The first number, 225, is not tread width, but section width, representing the widest section of the tire from the outer to inner sidewall, when mounted on the standard specified width wheel (“Measuring Rim Width”) for that particular tire size.

Tread width is not a standardized dimension so it shouldn’t be considered comparable between different manufacturers.

Lightbringer · 2018-12-05T22:50:56.000Z

MtnDon:

That has nothing to do with the system of measurement. That has all to do with Greed. Greed is pretty much universal though perhaps more noticeable when large corporations are running the show. It does pay to be able to read and do math.

Mmmm, yes’n’no.

2L bottles of sody-pop were accepted because they were similar in size to typische half-gallon bottles, ’though milk still comes in half-gallon jugs.

Were 2L less than ½gal, it probably wouldn’t’ve been accepted as well. After all, now you’re “getting more!”.

Yards to meters, okay. Feet to meters, divide by ~3? Not so much.

I remember the “5/8ths rule” to go from miles to kilometers and back (guesstimate as roughly half/double), but I have no clue what’s the constant to go from mpg to km/L. And L vs gal at the gas-pump? Might as well people to convert from dollars to quatloos.

So yeah, there’s some greed to it, but it’s what units you ultimately can “think in”.

I always hated am/pm, ferinstance, so ages ago started going to 24hr time, setting all my watches/clocks to 24hr time, etc., and now I can “think in” 24hr time. Until that happened, I always had to add/subtract 12 as needed.

Going imperial ⇆ metric? People ain’t gonna wanna do it, not without being clubbed over the head with a metric bat.

BlueSwordM · 2018-12-05T22:53:25.000Z

@Lightbringer, did retailers actually try to make a pound 400g rather than 450g?

How did they think that was going to fly?

It’s not like the situation with a 1/2 lb burger and 1/4 lb burger fiasco at Burger King and Macdonalds where people are just bad at math.

Lightbringer · 2018-12-05T22:55:53.000Z

MtnDon:

Reminds me of the “Gimli Glider” situation; Air Canada, 1983

Yep, did that in the flightsim just to see how I’d fare. (Actually landed w/o crashing!)

No 767 in my stable, so had to do it in the 737 or 777 (I think the latter).

Lightbringer · 2018-12-05T22:59:35.000Z

TheIntruder:

The first number, 225, is not tread width, but section width, representing the widest section of the tire from the outer to inner sidewall, when mounted on the standard specified width wheel (“Measuring Rim Width”) for that particular tire size.

Tread width is not a standardized dimension so it shouldn’t be considered comparable between different manufacturers.

Yeh, but I couldn’t think of the term offhand.

I found that out trying to figure what’s the widest tire I could stuff onto a particular rim. Tire Rack or someone similar had those online calculators for max/min width, etc.

Henk4U2 · 2018-12-05T23:07:34.000Z

TheIntruder:

… Michelin introduced a new tire/wheel system with a bead design to better cope with the advent of lower profile tires in the 70s, with the TRX tires and TR rims that had metric diameters (i.e. 190/65-390). It was utilized by a handful of OEMs, mostly for sports cars, but nothing beyond that, and it fizzled out.

Wow, was not aware of that piece of information.
What I do know is that a few decades ago I owned a feisty little car that sat on 165/65 R 340 TRX tires.

A big pothole in the streets of Rotterdam caused a ding in one of the mag wheels and turned it into a liability.
That’s why I use it up until this day as a spool for my garden hose.

Lightbringer · 2018-12-05T23:04:29.000Z

BlueSwordM:

@Lightbringer, did retailers actually try to make a pound 400g rather than 450g?

How did they think that was going to fly?

It’s not like the situation with a 1/2 lb burger and 1/4 lb burger fiasco at Burger King and Macdonalds where people are just bad at math.

Me? Unno, think TomTom posted that.

Wouldn’t surprise me, though, selling someone short, under the guise of “making it easier” for the dumb-as-a-post customer.

—

Oh yeh, what about the burgers? Is this the asterisked microprint “before cooking” dealy?

I was reminded of the actual 11” Subway “footlong” hero that people sued ’em over.

Bad enough, though. Used to be on a footlong you’d get 8 meatballs, or 4- or 8 slices of meat, but now I started counting only 7 meatballs, and only 3- or 6 slices of meat. Wtf??

BlueSwordM · 2018-12-05T23:06:46.000Z

@Lightbringer, what happened is that Burger King was selling 1/2 pound burgers, and MD 1/4 pound burgers, for the same price.

Guess which outsold which? MacDonald’s.

Why because? Because a large number of customers actually thought that the 1/4 pound burgers were actually bigger than 1/2 pound burgers.

MtnDon · 2018-12-05T23:09:27.000Z

If you can get used to a clock that has a 24-hour face you can change from US Imperial to metric, IMO. It may take a generation or two to complete the switch, but change can happen. I grew up in Canada using the Canadian/British Imperial system. Traveling to the US early in life I got used to having to account for the difference in the size between the volume measurements (smaller US gallon, quart, etc.) but the same linear and weight measurements.

In Canada, I used metric measurements in some aspects of my employment before Canada went metric. Then after Canada began the switch to metric I moved to the US where everything was in US Imperial. I adapted. I have traveled in the EU a fair amount. After a while, you can get to use and relate to whatever the local system of measurement is without having to think or convert between systems. Much like if/when you are fluently bilingual you can converse in English, French, Spanish, whatever, without actually having to consciously translate from one language to another.

DavidEF · 2018-12-06T00:11:03.000Z

It’s actually easier to speak various different languages fluently without trying to convert them in your head. I’m sure it’s the same with measurement systems.