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230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

theregister.com

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Re: 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

#21

Post by bliteben »

irdc wrote: post #9
radiator wrote: post #8

Such a long article, repeatedly praising the "simplicity" of the metric system, and it still ignores all possible opposing views. Not a word about the superiority of the duodecimal system when dividing quantities, even though a couple of examples are quoted (12 inches is a foot, 12 pence to the shilling). No effort to explain whyever someone would approach the matter in this way. The author is either extremely biased…

Quick, how many inches are in a yard?

How many seconds are in a minute? How many hours are in a day?

Re: 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

#22

Post by bliteben »

irdc wrote: post #16
spoils19 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Ah yes, the global conspiracy to get people to... checks notes ...occasionally use a pocket calculator. Very socialist indeed. A system merely suitable for the human scale will never enable you to reach beyond.

Fractions are good for your brain and inherently more accurate.

Re: 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

#23

Post by dogma1138 »

cameronh90 wrote: post #15
dogma1138 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh? Have you seen the mess that is the British measurement system? Distances are in meters if they are short, miles if they are long, Leeds will be 275 miles away from your gas station that would charge you by the liter so would be most other liquids unless they are milk or beer, then you’ll get a mixtures of metric pipes with inch threads and inch pipes with metric threads, when you buy a property the land would be…

Things like threads sizes staying imperial makes sense to me. I believe they are now technically defined in mm, but obviously it's still based on fractions of an inch. In my view, there aren't any truly compelling reasons to switch from BSP to something based on natural metric measures. On the other hand, if we were to replace these pipe fittings with metric, we'd end up with a mixed system for realistically at least…

The problem is that BSP only applies to a specific types of pipes, soft water piping like PEX, gas and other pipes are often a mishmash of thread standards as they are not covered by BSP.

So in reality there already is a mixed system which is often what causes a lot of headaches, what’s worse is that BSP is also a mixed standard it has both metric and imperial measurements for its standard threads however when you mix fittings that were machines using metric and pipes that were machined with imperial I’ve found that because of slight tolerance differences you often can get into a point where stacked tolerances becomes and issue.

Re: 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

#26

Post by Amezarak »

mocopoco wrote: post #4

I find it more that a little amusing, that despite the US friendship with France, Websters idea of decolonising English was to alter the french derived words like 'centre'

The article overstates Webster's influence. He did not invent those spellings (the article says they are "new versions of old words"), which predated him sometimes by centuries. He simply standardized them. English spelling at the time was very lax, and had been for centuries. You can find people spelling their own name inconsistently!

The article cites color, center, and aluminum.

Color is essentially etymologically correct - it comes from the Latin word color, by way of France, which did not spell it colour either. And the spelling in English is attested long before Webster. Here's an example from 1657.

https://books.google.com/books?id=xAdmAAAAcAAJ&pg=RA3-PA3&dq...

Here's an example of "center" from 1704: https://books.google.com/books?id=GBcOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA282&dq=c...

And aluminum comes from the British Humphry Davy in 1812, not Webster! This is at least excusable, since aluminum was a newer spelling, as opposed to color and center, which had been in very common use for hundreds of years.

It's very disappointing when journalists get easily verifiable historical facts wrong.

FWIW, America' friendship with France was also rapidly cooling in the 1790s, as the article alludes to. By the Adams administration, it was positively anti-France.

Re: 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

#27

Post by troelsSteegin »

"Beyond Measure" [0], by James Vincent, is a good well researched read on the history of metrology. He doesn't mention the Dombey story. He does conclude [p. 265] that the ultimate reason that the imperial system stuck in the US and Great Britain (100 years after Dombey) was that these economies were dominant incumbents and didn't /need/ to change. Great Britain had metric and imperial in parallel. For the US, the switching cost was too high.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jun/07/beyond-measure...

Re: 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

#28

Post by albertopv »

radiator wrote: post #8

Such a long article, repeatedly praising the "simplicity" of the metric system, and it still ignores all possible opposing views. Not a word about the superiority of the duodecimal system when dividing quantities, even though a couple of examples are quoted (12 inches is a foot, 12 pence to the shilling). No effort to explain whyever someone would approach the matter in this way. The author is either extremely biased…

Taken as a whole SI units are really what makes the difference

Re: 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

#29

Post by beardyw »

BerislavLopac wrote: post #13
charlieyu1 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it quite strange that the British don't use imperial units anymore.

Oh they do, in everyday life: * Road distances are measured in miles. * Drinks are ordered in pints. * People measure height in feet/inches and weight in stones. But yes, pretty much everything else is metric.

I have been measuring my weight in kilos for a long time. Height though, well that doesn't change so it has been pre-metric up to my recent age related shrinkage! I had to declare both my new height and weight on a form, so now I have a metric height!

Re: 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

#30

Post by tzs »

wirrbel wrote: post #18
radiator wrote: post #8

Such a long article, repeatedly praising the "simplicity" of the metric system, and it still ignores all possible opposing views. Not a word about the superiority of the duodecimal system when dividing quantities, even though a couple of examples are quoted (12 inches is a foot, 12 pence to the shilling). No effort to explain whyever someone would approach the matter in this way. The author is either extremely biased…

How many ounces are in a pound?

That's not so much an argument for using metric units as it is an argument for fixing naming in the Imperial system.

What makes Imperial units harder to remember than metric units is not that they are related by factors of 2^n 3^m instead of factors of 10^n. It is that the names of different units of the same kind are not predictable based on their ratios.

If you had a system with the same relationships as Imperial, but say all the weight units were of the form pound, where indicates the multiplier or divider to go from pounds to that derived unit, and the same prefixes were used also used with length units so lengths were all yard, Imperial units would be a lot easier than they are now.

The metric vs Imperial debate would then simply be whether factors of 10^n are better or worse than factors of 2^n 3^m.

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