Why America is anti-metric

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I know we had a lengthy discussion about pros and cons of metric on BITOG several years back. I just remembered it when reading this article...

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2015/07/us/metric-road-american-story/

Having grown up on metric, the whole concept of imperial units was really foreign to me. It took a lot of time to get used to it as I would always be trying to convert in my head back to metric... for example, 12 inches meant little to me, but I could easily imagine the length of 30 centimeters in my head.

But the more time I spent with Imperial system, the more I started realizing it's what makes America what it is. Thinking of all the literature, song lyrics, movies... they would just not sound the same if miles, gallons, and pounds were suddenly replaced by kilometers, liters, and kilograms. I guess what I'm saying is that there is certain charm to it, and maybe it's worth preserving its uniqueness.
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http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2015/07/us/metric-road-american-story/

Quote:
Marciano, however, makes a credible argument for the old way of counting, which is based on everyday things and parts of the body.

"People say the metric system makes sense," Marciano says, "But in nature we don't think about dividing things by 10, do we? We think of halves and feet and thirds."

Acres, for instance, were based on the amount of land a man could plow in a day.

"Throughout history we have measured things by ourselves," Marciano says. "We are really losing something with metric."

[...]

Marciano ends his book on the metric system with this thought: Think of America as preserving important ways of thinking that human beings used for centuries.

"If we get rid of our measures, we will never bring them back. To be for a metric America is to be for a global monoculture."
 
When Oz went metric, there was nothing that stated that the old songs had to be rewritten in metric units.

Some cultures, the land a man could own was based on how far he could fire an arrow...effective but hard to standardise.

I can pace out 1m to a pretty fair degree, which to me seems a natural unit of measure.

To stay with the old measuring system leads to people saying that "horsepower ant torque are equal at 5250 RPM, while in metric, the units actually build together to make a coherent universe.

BTW, Monsanto are the ones who want a global monoculture
 
Originally Posted By: Shannow
When Oz went metric, there was nothing that stated that the old songs had to be rewritten in metric units.

I wasn't implying that they had to be rewritten. Just merely stating that what's been created thus far has a certain ring to it thanks to the units of measure currently in use.
 
It stays anti metric because oil filter companies want people to stay ignorant about efficiency ratings, and they are a powerful bunch. It's a government plot fueled by the oil filter lobby. Who knows what that micron thing is in an inches world, and then they say at and greater than at to confuse the citizens even more.

Look, liters is too small, need gallons, and everybody knows three feet make a yard and 12 inches makes a foot. It's the best system.
 
I consider myself fortunate to be 'bilingual' - my early years were entirely in Imperial, I was introduced to SI in Science class in Gr 8, and later Canada moved to SI in stages between '76 & '79.

I see the advantages of both systems, and move back and forth between them with little effort.

Generalizing, Canadians think of peoples' weight & height in Imperial, temperature in SI, and distances in a curious mixture of both. (Oh yah, go down about another 10 kilometres, turn right at the sign and go two miles, and it's maybe a hundred metres on yer left. An 8-foot 2x4 will never be referred to as a 2.44 m 5x10.)

At least we never had Britain's mutant currency with multiples of 12 and 20.
 
Hello, madRiver said, "I don't see any financial argument to motivate the government, people, and majority of business to convert." You don't?

The world's automobile market was metric everywhere but in No. America. It changed over to be in the "financial" swing of things (sell their products abroad).

The scientific world and that of the chemical and medical professions are all metric. It's easier to peddle one's theories when scientists the world over can recreate your experiments.

I do not know if refrigerators and the like are built in inches or mm but I assume the latter. In such cases a consumer is going to measure the outer dimensions in his prevailing, familiar units.
So often we see capacities and dimensions listed both ways. As mentioned above, we use both.

I'd bet money that the motivations behind NOT converting completely to metric included 1) having to be championed by politicians. I believe those stuffed shirts (relax, both parties) are too cowardly to actually initiate anything which requires citizens thinking.

FOR EXAMPLE, think of all the foolish talk regarding recycling. And recycling saves energy, space in landfills and reduces taxes. "I gotta have two garbage cans in my kitchen?"

2) Let's face it, the willingness of the work force didn't need to be tested in that way. And that's as nicely as I can put it. What I want to say is: I believe many a U.S. worker is too lazy/stupid to adjust. There, I said it.

Flame suit on! Kira
 
Hold out a piece of string.
Divide it by 2. Easy, right?
Divide it by 4. Good.
Divide it by 10. This is left as an exercise for the reader.
 
I'm with QP
Ever get a product or in my case a gun with a mix of Imperial and metric fasteners and o rings and then a few sourced Chinese grub screws that are in-between torx and allen head and neither
of the either
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Also as I prepare for a virtual beating I am a fool but I like how Americans build cars for American roads. Everybody now builds cars to handle like Euro spec and most of that is too taunt for our roads. Enough already!
 
Six to one, half a dozen the other.
It's pretty easy to do the conversions in your head, but we are accustomed to the system of weights and measures that we've used for so many decades.
The US economy remains large enough that there is nothing that compells us to switch.
In science, though, you don't see anything published in which the units aren't metric.
 
I was part of the American generation that learned the metric system in grade school because we were converting. Ha.

When I got to college and studied science and engineering everything thing was metric. I loved it. Metric system is a lot easier without fractions. Most all my tools are metric. Years ago a friend of mine went overseas for habitat for humanity and had to have a metric tape measure. That wasn't the easiest thing to source.

I wish we would have converted back in the 70s.
 
Just food for thought, I worked in high tech mfg for many years. Many machines and machine tools (cnc and non cnc) and machinists tools are graduated in inches. We had many functioning machines (NC controlled and some CNC) that were built in the 1960s and 1970s that were still capable of turning out high quality parts.

Modern CNC a simple parameter can be set to switch to mm, older machines... no such option.
 
We Americans are too dumb or lazy to learn the metric system, even though metric is so much easier.

I have a very good friend in Canada who tells gullible Americans that they have "Metric Time" in Canada. 100 Seconds in a minute. 100 minutes in an hour. 10 hours in a day..

No surprise that so many of us believe him. Sad!
 
Originally Posted By: goodtimes


Look, liters is too small, need gallons, and everybody knows three feet make a yard and 12 inches makes a foot. It's the best system.
Someone will be along telling about how confusing it is to figure out which wrench they need.
 
I majored in Physics and all the different measuring system, made it extra tough. I have read that the original error in the Hubble telescope mirror was do to converting wavelengths from metric to inches or visa versa. Now our "American" vehicle are a mix of metric, SAE and ? Ed
 
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Originally Posted By: ctrcbob
We Americans are too dumb or lazy to learn the metric system, even though metric is so much easier.

No surprise that so many of us believe him. Sad!

Uhh..no. The U.S. was producing over half of the worlds goods by 1940. We had no incentive to change (with good reason). Converting would have cost money. It made perfect sense then. Not so much now, which is why we are changing. Engineers as late as 1970 were still geared to the English system.

Not saying that the U.S. is not full of bottem feeders..but remember many of them are folks that walked across the boarder to pick grapes and live the american dream at taxpayer's expense.
 
It's because Americans have superior math skills and don't need some silly multiples of ten type measurement system.

We flaunt how we adore math over rap music, reality TV and porn by sticking to our measurement system.
 
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